Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 43

FC Bayern Munich related articles
Hi, could some of you also keep an eye on the FC Bayern Munich related articles, especially Louis van Gaal? There are some editors who don't understand the difference between extremely unlikely and impossible. Bayern could still theoretically lose the championship, so we shouldn't add it yet. --Jaellee (talk) 09:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Categories
Hello teammates,

After having a conversation with a user, i bring this to your attention: when a player has appeared in his career for two countries (be it solely in club action or for a different national team as well), how are categories "presented"?

Better with a "clean" example: see Liédson. I have inserted in his article PORTUGUESE FOOTBALLERS (what he is at the moment), but also BRAZILIAN FOOTBALLERS (he was such until late 2009, at the age of 32) and BRAZILIAN EXPATRIATE FOOTBALLERS (he was a Brazilian citizen when he joined Sporting Clube de Portugal, and remained in that condition for many years (exactly six full seasons)).

I believe the full scope of categories should be present in the subject's articles, not just information regarding the present status. What are the forum's (and WP's) views on this subject?

Attentively, from Portugal - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 22:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

He has Brazilian footballers & Portuguese footballers categories among other categories in his article. I think this is correct. Kingjeff (talk) 23:04, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

McLaughlin / McLaughlan
Can anyone check the spelling of Jon McLaughlin's surname please? A brief discussion that I initiated on the player's talk page in May 2009 concluded in the current spelling, but the BBC insist on using 'McLaughlan'...GiantSnowman 05:45, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not sure where you expect us to check that you don't have access to, but since the comments at his talk page, soccerbase have changed from the A spelling to the I spelling, and the Football League use I, and the BBC are inconsistent, but use the I when he is the main subject of the article. Kevin McE (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The BBC keep on insisting that Stephen O'Leary is actually called Stephen O'Neill. I wouldn't use them as the best source for lower league football. 91.106.115.126 (talk) 00:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * McLaughlin actually has two Soccerbase profiles, with the accurate one appearance-wise spelling his name as 'McLaughlan'...GiantSnowman 23:18, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

William Potts, british citizen, Cunard Line, S.S.C. Napoli cofounder
do you have informations about him? There are also different spelling for his name and surname..93.33.0.137 (talk) 07:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think to create his pahe on italian wiki..93.33.7.24 (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Football seasons
What is the naming standard for articles about football seasons? I've seen both Eredivisie 2007–08 and 2009–10 Eredivisie being used for Dutch football. See Category:Eredivisie seasons and Category:Eerste Divisie seasons for all the season articles. 94.212.31.237 (talk) 08:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Per consensus established at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 33, the standard format is "2222–23 Fooian League". Any seasons which do not apply this pattern should be moved to the correct title. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 09:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Ladies football articles
Hi project. I just spent a relatively enjoyable couple of hours watching the FA Women's Cup final, and thought I'd see the state of our articles on some of the finalists. Well, on average, terrible. I was wondering if we had anyone around the project who would be prepared to dig around a bit for some references (the biggest issue) on at least some of our top lady players. I'm a third of the way through the Arsenal LFC team and most of them have serious BLP problems. Any volunteers to help around in this much-maligned and overlooked area of the beautiful game would be gratefully thanked. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I noticed that someone tagged dozens of German women's national team player articles as unreferenced recently, and they all just refer to the de.wikipedia for sourcing. There are two-time World Cup winners in this group, so it would be good to improve them enough to avoid deletion. The DFB website usually has a profile page for each national team player so I've been adding those at least. This area could definitely use more attention. Jogurney (talk) 18:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Jo, good to hear from you. I'm (nationalistically) most interested in British ladies teams but yes, of course, the German articles should be top ranking, as per the team.  The more volunteers we have, the better.  The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Seedings for international tournaments
has been adding tables with seedings for various international tournaments (mostly World Cups and European Championships), but without providing a source for them. I'm sure a similar pattern of edits was made by another anonymous user recently, but I can't find them. Since they're unsourced, I feel it would be prudent to simply revert these changes, but it would be nice to try to corroborate the tables. Does anyone know where to find seeding info for the 1974 FIFA World Cup (for example)? – PeeJay 20:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * One thing is sure, the draw was on 6-1-1974 and Yugoslavia hadn't qualified yet. The match Yugoslavia-Spain was played on 13-2-1974. Cattivi (talk) 00:53, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Major Indoor Soccer League
Any input here would be appreciated, if the TFD is still open. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

OFC Membership
Are Micronesia and Palau definitely associate members of the Oceania Football Confederation? The OFC website says it has three associate members, yet wikipedia lists five. TheBigJagielka (talk) 01:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Football stub categories
Further to previous postings I would like to raise a discussion relating to the number of football-bio stub categories, and the rationale for them. Category:English football biography stubs provides links to numerous sub-categories just within the 'English bio' area. These are basically sub-divided by position and decade, thus creating a large number of stub categories. I am unsure what the purpose of all these sub-divisions are, and who benefits from them?

This issue first came up when I started trying to change the wording of the stub categories (and the templates) so as nationality was not implied when it was not actually known. See the successful log for the one stub category I did succeed in renaming, but it was quite a task to do that, and given my question above, I'm not sure if there's a need to do this if there's agreement that the current football-bio-stub-categories can be substantially thinned out. Further info on the details relating to the log move is at. I think the wording at Template:england-footy-bio-stub is appropriate and covers people who substantially played football in a particular country, without necessarily being a 'national' of that country. Clearly the issue relates to more than just the English ones although I guess these are most numerous. Eldumpo (talk) 10:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the new wording and would support changing all the templates and categories to match.
 * The splits have been done because in the past it was found that categories with over 800 articles made it harder for editors to find the articles to expand and so the stub sorting project attempt to split categories when they get to 800. Waacstats (talk) 21:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

1971 Swiss Championship
The wikipage about 1970/71 Swiss Championship is wrong. The league was not won by Basel but by Grasshoppers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.236.140.162 (talk) 16:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no inaccuracy, as is outlined in the article text and as I have explained on the talk page. Knepflerle (talk) 13:59, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To be fair to the anon user, there was when they posted. It was fixed in response to their post. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 14:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. Knepflerle (talk) 14:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Romanian Liga II fully pro?
I am currently involved in a dispute of some PROD's I added to Liga II players. Since it wasn't listed at WP:FPL, I assumed that the league was not fully pro. However, User:Jjmihai has claimed that it is, but hasn't provided any sources to support that claim. Could someone shed some light on the matter? Is Liga II fully pro or not? Thanks. Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Footballers in Spain by club
A lot of the categories in this super-category use the format "[club] footballers". As I understand it, this format should be reserved for multi-sport clubs, where the use of "[club] players" would be ambiguous. Is that the case for all of the clubs in that category, or do we need to start a CfD discussion? – PeeJay 20:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion on current list of fb templates
A list of current fb templates, together with their purposes, is under discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Season article task force. The goals are to identify the most commonly used templates and any candidates for merger or deletion. Participation in this process is gladly welcome.

Note: This post is for informational purposes only, please reply at the SATF page in order to avoid discussion forking. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 21:34, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Infobox edits query
Do people think edits like this are useful? The editor's sporadically made this change to a few articles - is it worth applying it to all clubs........? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 19:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really think it's necessary. Sure, it's nice to know whether a team came 10th out of 10 teams or 10th out of 20, but is it really worth putting it in the infobox? – PeeJay 20:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For the first couple of places it doesn't matter too much, but a placing without knowing how many teams are doesn't really say much. I, for one, would be in favour of this sort of change. Sir Sputnik (talk) 20:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose: if a team is relegated, it usually says so, but not how many others were relegated or whether they came close to survival; if a team is not relegated (let's hope, Chris) saying 20th out of 24 gives no info about whether 1,2,3 or 4 teams below them were relegated, or how comfortably they survived, so it doesn't add any value. But I wouldn't be bothered about posting it, except where it is inaccurate.  Somebody has been posting out of 24 on Conference National teams, but Chester did not come 24th, so Grays were not 23rd out of 24.  While I'm at it, can I give a reminder/plea that divisional changes occur at the official date of the commencement of the new season: it is acceptable to say in the pub that Sheffield Wednesday are now in League One, but not in an encyclopaedia that deals with officially verifiable facts.  Kevin McE (talk) 21:54, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I am fairly opposed to this idea, I don't think it really adds any value. Kevin, I agree with the majority of your post, but that last it is just a tiny bit pedantic don't you think. For all intents and purposes, the relegated teams don't play in the same division any longer (and any reliable sources will most likely tell us that). By the way, this isn't a dig at you but when is "the official date of the commencement of the new season", is it just an arbitrary date that we make up here on this project? Big  Dom  22:14, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The start of season date varies from league to league. I don't know about in other countries but in Germany it's 1 July. Sir Sputnik (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not certain of the exact date: I used to say 1st July for English leagues, but I have noticed serious media all changing together, but on a date that varies slightly year to year, in late June. But that is the point: all reliable sources will continue to present Peterborough as a Championship team (for example) until one day in late June, when they will all change.  We should not anticipate reliable sources, but follow them. Kevin McE (talk) 22:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's be clear in that this is harmless, but in the interests of consistency and professional display I think we're better mandating against this in the club MoS. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:40, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation in specific language groups
Where we have two footballers of the same name and nationality, we use year of birth to distinguish between them (Peter Taylor (footballer born 1928) and Peter Taylor (footballer born 1953)), not their middle names (Peter Thomas Taylor and Peter John Taylor).

So what about when the players are Russian or Spanish?
 * Sergei Ivanov (footballer born 1980)/Sergei Ivanov (footballer born 1984), or Sergei Nikolayevich Ivanov/Sergei Yuryevich Ivanov?
 * José Sánchez (footballer born 1972)/José Sánchez (footballer born 1985), or José Sánchez Rodríguez/José Sánchez Gómez?

(the Ivanovs are real, the Sánchezes are my invention)

I would argue that we should not have a different policy for those language groups that make more use of tertiary names than English does, as neither Spanish maternal surnames nor Russian patronymics, are part of a common name in English sources. Thus these are not an easily identifiable way, for users of English language media, of ensuring that the correct Sergei Ivanov/José Sánchez is being referred to. For those using the search box, my preference gives some hope of knowing which Ivanov/Sánchez is being looked for. But I am in a dispute with a couple of members of WP:RUSSIA, who claim that a patronymic is part of the individual's common name.

(How many of you could give Roman Abramovitch's patronymic, or Fernando Torres' maternal surname, without looking them up?) Kevin McE (talk) 22:45, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * In English, the Spanish players will be known by forename and surname only, and consequently should be listed at José Sánchez (footballer born 1972)/José Sánchez (footballer born 1985) in my opinion. Maternal surnames etc. should only be used as a second-level disambiguator. GiantSnowman 23:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've never seen Russian footballers' patronymics given in the US press. Occasionally, a Spanish footballer's maternal surname is used, but it's quite rare. Jogurney (talk) 13:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that we shouldn't use names rarely seen in English to disambiguate. Patronymics are not part of the common-name of these players in English, and that is waht matters per WP:AT.  Using birthdate to disambiguate is preferable. Knepflerle (talk) 14:28, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactamundo. There's no need for interwiki consistency here; players may be - and indeed definitely are - known by different names in different countries (and thus languages) and on en-WP we should dab using only what's commonly used in English reliable sources. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:43, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Season attendances
Hi all! I have created a set of templates for the display of season attendances — fb a header, fb a team and fb a footer. You may see them used in the recent J. League season articles (J1 or J2) with more to follow.

I have lurked throughout archives of this discussion but haven't found a clear point of view: is this information valuable enough to keep it in season articles? For my point of view it is definitely yes, and J. League itself emphasizes the importance of visitors to the competition. But I'd like to hear your opinions, too — is it worthy to be mentioned in other season articles, where such data is available?. Thanks, —WiJG? 06:15, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Seeing as you ask, no. We are not a statistical almanac.  If there are any particularly notable points of interest, include them in the text; the rest isn't notable by definition.
 * On a general note, I can't see the particular need for using templates for this. The current trend for reams of bespoke fb templates, each with its own intricacies and obscurities of syntax, decimates the editability for people outside the project (never mind wiki-newbies) and makes the Wiki-markup unreadable to the average editor.  I'm not sure that's worth the slight gain in formatting consistency, which is pleasant but hardly a vital requirement.  Templates have their uses but also their abuses; they are not always a net positive. Knepflerle (talk) 11:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, this information isn't in itself notable. Dancarney (talk) 15:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd like to disagree - alongside score and scorers, attendances are one of the most commonly reported facts from football matches. They are also an interesting reflection on a season - adding the comparator allows readers to see whether they have gone up or down, and compare it with the league table to see whether success has had an effect or not. It would certainly be of interest to see a Division Three table from the mid 1990s with Wigan struggling to pass the 2,000 barrier. However, a template is not needed - this can easily be done in a sortable table. пﮟოьεԻ   5  7  21:33, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * "But it's occasionally interesting" is not a defence against WP:NOT. Your argument's back-to-front - if you want a general exception to a general rule, you shouldn't be arguing from isolated special cases.
 * There is no need to lumber every other article with table after table of numerical data which is mainly of no interest for the sake of the exceptional cases. As I said before - if there is the odd case where attendance is a matter of interest, add a sentence to the article text about it that people can actually read.  Give our readers articles, not spreadsheets. Knepflerle (talk) 09:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Utility templates are great and all, but their existence does implicitly encourage their proliferation and that occasionally requires discussion. For the time being I'd like for the documentation to note that the template isn't yet intended for general use on season articles, even if I wouldn't suggest removing it from current deployments right now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Links to player profiles at league/football association websites
I find these links to be useful and reliable in sourcing information about various football players who have played in a particular league or for a national team. Unfortunately, it seems that these websites change their url addresses on a somewhat regular basis. Someone listed the change to the Brazilian FA website a few weeks ago, and I noticed that the K-League has changed its url recently as well. Since there can be thousands of articles using these website links, it seems like a using a template is a good idea so we can change the urls quickly (at the template once, rather than on every individual article that uses the template). I made a start on templates here: template:CBF Profile and template:K-League Profile. Please feel free to improve them. Any others we should work on? Best regards. Jogurney (talk) 14:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * When you're working on these, please also consider sending a friendly mail to the webmaster of the sites in question pointing out why this is problematic. Considering that this is 2010, professional sports organisations should really not be employing website developers who don't understand the concept of permalinks. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:25, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Debenture (sport) needs expert attention
Hey folks,

Debenture (sport) is in need of some expert attention. Please drop by and help to bring the article up to scratch. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Footballers loans
If a footballers is on loan at a club until the end of the season, and that league's season is over, should i changed the club years. For example, David healy,who is on loan at ipswich town, from 2009- to 2009-10? Gobbleswoggler (talk) 19:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There are differing views on this. Some loan contracts are reported as "to the end of the season", which could mean anything; does it mean the day after the last game of the season (whether that is the last league game or the last of the play-off matches), or does it mean 30 June - the date that contracts in winter football nations (such as the UK) typically run out on? To play it safe, I would say that Healy's loan doesn't officially end until 30 June. – PeeJay 21:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It is always best to consider the following when updating an article with current information: "am I updating because I saw a new source which says what I am adding, or am I interpreting old material?" If the former is true, then fine. If the latter, then unless the article's factual accuracy would be so compromised as to be detrimental to the subject's reputation then it would be best not to. Footballers' contracts are not public information, so unless there is concrete new information available to support the change then it should not be made. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Association football players by position
Do we need sub-cats added to this category page to reflect some of the former football positions that are no longer in use e.g. Wing half I understand to be a combination of defender/midfielder and inside forward to be midfield/forward/winger. Are new categories to cover these deemed appropriate, as these player positions are listed on a number of articles? Eldumpo (talk) 11:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Firstly, a friendly tip: an inside forward wasn't a winger; the old version of a winger was called an outside forward. Secondly, I agree that we could do with some more categories because for players from say 100 years ago the current positions are not appropriate. Big  Dom  11:18, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for response. I am therefore suggesting that Category:Association football inside forwards and Category:Association football wing halves are set up. Are there others that should be added? Is there any way that a bot could search current articles/category listings and where 'wing half' etc is listed move it to the new category or will it all need to be done manually? Eldumpo (talk) 08:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I would also propose that there was a category Category:Association football outside forwards, for comprehensiveness. I think it would have to be done manually; I'd imagine that using a bot, there would be many articles placed in these categories incorrectly. However, bots aren't my area of expertise so perhaps someone else would be better answering this part of your query. Big  Dom  08:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I have set-up the three categories above except my redlink for the inside forward category was missing a colon so when I clicked to create it I have just created an article. Any ideas what the best approach to rectify this is - just create the category at the correct name, and speedy delete the old?

Await to see if anyone says a bot can assist in populating these (I have just added 1 or 2 manually to get them going), but if not would anyone be willing to assist in going through some of the existing football categories and removing/replacing any of those that fit into the three new ones? Eldumpo (talk) 09:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd just create the category properly, and then delete the page you made under WP:CSD (test page) or something like that. Big  Dom  09:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If we are indeed creating these categories, I believe we should also create categories for full-backs (the pre-1960s position, as opposed to the modern definition of a full-back), half-backs (inclusive of centre-halves and wing-halves) and forwards (including outside forwards, inside forwards and centre-forwards). – PeeJay 11:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Having two categories for fullbacks could get quite confusing to be honest. I agree that we could do with categories for half-backs (which were the old version of today's central defenders). Big  Dom  13:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Surely half-backs were the old midfielders (not in style of play but position)? And we would need separate categories for both wing-halves and centre-halves. But where would we draw the line between centre-halves who actually played as half-backs and centre-halves who played between the two full-backs as a third defender? – PeeJay 13:28, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the last few posts confirm this is quite a tricky issue, and that there is a need to balance between having correct, distinct categories and not trying to sub-divide too much? Eldumpo (talk) 14:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. Dividing too finely opens a huge can of worms. Does "water-carrier" deserve its own position? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Importance assessment of Champions League articles
User:Kingjeff seems to believe that the article for the current season of the UEFA Champions League is deserving of Top-Importance in our assessment scale. After I pointed out to him that not even the competition's main article is rated as Top-Importance, he promptly changed that article's importance to Top as well. As I understand it, Top-Importance is intended to be reserved for articles that are integral to the topic, such as Association football (obviously), FIFA, the continental confederations and some definition articles; hence, it would not be appropriate for the article of a single season of a competition to be rated as Top-Importance, correct? Presumably as a compromise, User:Grsz11 has weighed in to the discussion by re-re-assessing 2009–10 UEFA Champions League as High-Importance. I believe that this is still too high a rating and seems to be weighted based on the fact that the competition is current. Are we supposed to change an article's importance every time it becomes current? In my opinion, unless something incredibly notable is included in an article, no season article should be rated above Low-Importance to this project. After all, there have been more than 50 years worth of Champions League articles. Opinions? – PeeJay 22:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Top-importance should be reserved for a small number of core articles and certainly no season article should ever be Top-importance, and probably not High-importance either. Our current assessment guidelines suggest that all season articles should be Low-importance, though maybe where the topic has wide geographical scope and relates to football at a high level we could allow Mid-importance (e.g. for Champions League seasons)? I think as a project we should review the Top-importance category as I don't think any single team should be in there, despite Brazil's great achievements. --Jameboy (talk) 00:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I actually disagree with that; remember that importance is relative and that the footy project covers hundreds of thousands of articles. The main article for the most prestigious club tournament in the world should certainly be Top-priority. I don't think that the individual season articles need to be though, especially not the current one (rank recentism). There's no need for total consistency through the national team articles either; some articles are more important for a general audience (such as the ones for the teams who have won the World Cup) than others. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Hatnote on Squad template
Over recent months, several discussions here have considered the use of flags in the squad template, how to reference them, and how to respond to failure to reference them. Many people have expressed a wish to have adequate referencing for flags, or in the absence of this, and in view of other MoS issues, to remove them altogether, but there was opposition to this; there was no clear consensus against any of the discussions, but they dwindled out. I don't necessarily mean to revisit those, but arising from them we have a text on the c. 6000 articles using Template:Football squad start that states "Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality." This seems to me neither accurate (FIFA makes no ruling on the nationality of the vast majority of players, who never get anywhere near international selection) nor adequate (the phrase "non-FIFA nationality" is not very clear, and no one nationality is more, or less, FIFA than a second, third or fourth). There had been some discussion of this, but it was abandoned when a proposal, not subsequently adopted, was put forward that would have made this hatnote redundant.

Some of the alternative phrasings suggested were:
 * Flags indicate most recent national representation or, for a player who has not appeared internationally, nationality by birth or naturalisation; players may have other eligibilities
 * Flags indicate national team preference as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
 * Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold multiple citizenships.
 * Flags indicate most recent national representation or, for a player who has not appeared internationally, nationality by birth or naturalisation. Individuals may hold multiple citizenships, and the flag is not a representation of ethnicity.
 * Flags indicate most recent national representation or, for a player who has not appeared internationally,expressed nationality . Individuals may hold multiple citizenships.
 * Flags indicate most recent national representation, or for a player who has not appeared internationally, nationality as verified by his current club.
 * or (my own not entirely serious suggestion, but illustrative of the issues that we need to bear in mind) Flags indicate Wikipedia's own invented notion of sporting nationality, which is determined by most recent national representation, or nation of birth for a player who has not appeared internationally, unless it is assumed that place of birth was a temporary displacement of the mother from the country that would be considered to be her, or the father's, homeland. Players may be eligible for selection by, or have previously appeared for, other national sides not listed, and might be keen to disassociate themselves with the nation that is recorded here by virtue of their place of birth.

So where do we go with this? Kevin McE (talk) 23:34, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * That last not-too-serious option is just too awesome! Digirami (talk) 00:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a wider issue relating to how we determine nationality than just the use of flags i.e. main article text, infoboxes, categories and stub categories (see my post on the latter below). In all of these areas there are assumptions being made about footballers' 'nationalities' which are not necessarily based on factual information. However, regarding your specific question, if such a template is to continue to remain then the wording should actually be as close to your last bullet point as is reasonable, although I think the template should start with 'Flags should indicate...' Eldumpo (talk) 11:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * ElDumpo, I couldn't agree more. Just see what I wrote in the discussions linked to in the original post. Knepflerle (talk) 02:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I would go with "Flags should indicate most recent national representation or, for a player who has not appeared internationally, country of birth; players may have other eligibilities". We don't use FIFA's rules, and naturalisation is incredibly difficult to verify. The two criteria in my suggested wording are at least often verifiable and close to the criteria used. Your last suggestion has many merits however! Knepflerle (talk) 02:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I really like "Flags indicate most recent national representation or, for a player who has not appeared internationally, nationality by birth or naturalisation. Individuals may hold multiple citizenships, and the flag is not a representation of ethnicity". --JonBroxton (talk) 18:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Frankly, "flags may not indicate nationality or international affiliation and are included for comparative purposes only" would be far less misleading than the present wording, but is too close to a disclaimer. But as far as I'm concerned the banner text is just a halfway house to the eventual nuking of inaccurate/inappropriate flags anyway. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

UEFA Cup qualifying
I have a question concerning notability rules and UEFA Cup qualifying. If a player's only potential claim to notability is to have played for a semi-pro team in the first qualifying round of the UEFA Cup does he pass WP:ATHLETE? Thanks in advance. Sir Sputnik (talk) 04:33, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Reliable secondary sources. ATHLETE is intended to provide a baseline which establishes a probability that a player has received sufficient coverage; it is not an end in itself. Next time, please bring the actual page in question up; omitting it is not helpful. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Bush Bucks FC
Bush Bucks F.C.

I can't agree with this article as is. The article is about two clubs with the same name. I think it should be split into two.. Bush Bucks F.C. (1957-2006), a former Premier Soccer League team and Bush Bucks F.C. (2007), a Vodacom League team. Thoughts? TheBigJagielka (talk) 18:07, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Is it in the same city or region? If yes, question 2 may apply.
 * 2) Does the league and/or club claim that the history of the 2007 version of the club is the same as the previous version history of the club? If yes, then I can see it working as 1 article. Kingjeff (talk) 19:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just one point, defunct clubs are usually disambiguated by only the year they were formed, rather than the years they were active. Examples: Accrington Stanley F.C. (1891), Maidstone United F.C. (1897), Rochdale A.F.C. (1896) and there are more. Big  Dom  08:55, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Relaunch, change of ownership, ground shift, name change etc: same article with redirects if necessary.
 * New club resuscitating old name, without right to previous history or league status: new article.
 * Simples Kevin McE (talk) 09:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've performed the split - two different clubs IMO. I think it's the latter in Kevin McE's criteria. As I understand it, I couldn't buy a club in the lower divisions and rename it to a foregone team's and claim their past victories. The situation is little different to for example Stephen Vaughan Sr. buying a Northern Premier League team and renaming them Chester City. TheBigJagielka (talk) 15:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How about if you have two teams with similar logos, names and colours to a defunct team playing the same league? Bohemians Praha (the club who bought the name) and Bohemians 1905 in the Gambrinus liga... Hack (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * These things are unusual enough to take on a case-by-case basis. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Football team name templates
Why do we need thousands of templates like Fb team Bor, which transclude e.g. "Bor" a string shorter than, and included in, the template name? Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed! Can we please find a way to do away with these ghastly things once and for all? – PeeJay 11:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree as well. No need whatsoever for all these templates. Big  Dom  11:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They're used in the league tables. Now I don't know WHY, but they're there and do give consistency. chandler 11:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They are thought to be used not only in the league tables, but in the results boxes and on some other places as well – basically everywhere where a template from the set of Category:Fb templates requires a team template. However, I agree that putting just the team name and a piped version into the template is not in the sense of WP:TEMPLATE. A proper team template should at least include an abbreviation used in the results table (example: Template:Fb team Manchester United). The whole heap of fb templates needs clean up (note to some readers: This is not be read as "extinction"!) anyway. Any volunteers who would like to help with that during the off-season are gladly welcome. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 12:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * In a word, no. Discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Season article task force. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:25, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

South African leagues
I've created four new pages for the PSL's predecessors:


 * SASL (1962-70)
 * FPL (1969-90) - I can't find what FPL stands for, presumably Football Premier League
 * NPSL (1971-95)
 * NSL (1985-95)

Any improvements much appreciated. TheBigJagielka (talk) 15:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorting table - alphabetical vs numerical
Hiya, sorry for another sorting Q. At the List of FC Barcelona players the goals and caps column sorts alphabetically. I have no clue as to why. I've tried asking in help:sorting but their advice doesn't work.

I have a column with numbers and an emdash. Before the emdash I've put HS 0. But it still sorts as alphabetical.

I am very confused.Sandman888 (talk) 16:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ooh, not sure what you've done there at all, why all the 0–'s? Try using SortKey, so you'd have  for those without goals or caps...  The Rambling Man (talk) 17:00, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, the 0–'s were my fault. – PeeJay 17:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The SortKey method should work, but you'd have to use it on all the numeric entries with fewer digits than the longest number used in the column, padding them with leading zeroes, as well as using it on the dashes. So if the longest number in the column has 3 digits, you'd have to use e.g.,  on any 1- or 2-digit number. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Really? That almost sounds like a flaw in the programming. Why does it work like that? Sandman888 (talk) 17:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Because it forces alpha sorting. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:08, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You should also apply nts to all numerical columns (caps & goals) in order for them to sort properly. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 11:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's certainly an alternative, and has the virtue of simplicity. But, you need to apply nts to all entries in the column, not just the exceptions, for that to work, which on a long list with only a few exceptions is an awful lot of template usage. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 11:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Forget Forfar four, Fife five, it's Motherwell six, Hibs six
I guess this will be created within moments. I wish I was there, but I guarantee someone will, within moments, prod or AFD it. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:10, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is an article for the equivalent match down south... Jmorrison230582 (talk) 17:46, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * True enough. I was feeling bitter and twisted, not for the first time... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Parker of Zamalek
Does anyone know the first name of Englishman Parker who coached Zamalek to the 1986 African Champions of Champions Cup? TheBigJagielka (talk) 13:24, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I could not find him.--Latouffedisco (talk) 18:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Ekingunel
If you've been paying attention over the last couple of days, I'm sure you'll have seen that User:Ekingunel has been adding a whole bunch of external links to a site called "footbalistic.com". I have a feeling this is a violation of WP:ELNO, so could we all please revert these additions? – PeeJay 19:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Apparently, that site claims "The team behind Footbalistic is comprised of football enthusiasts with a true passion and understanding of the game. In other words, Footbalistic is built by fans for fans. If you’re reading this page, it means that Team Footbalistic is working countless hours for you." It looks pretty professional, and seems comprehensive, but I still think this fails WP:RS.  Anyone else?  I'm happy, with some consensus, to remove all this.  The Rambling Man (talk) 19:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Get rid. However good the site is, adding it to all and sundry is spamming. If the editor wants to discuss its virtues on the talk page of each article they want to add it to, then it can be considered on a case-by-case basis. Until then, get rid. (In my personal opinion, obviously :-) cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I thought that too. (Obviously!).  Done.  And a final warning added.  Please be vigilant should these links re-appear courtesy of other "editors".  The Rambling Man (talk) 20:02, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Cross-sport uniform template policy discussion
You are invited to help consider a common template policy for all WP:SPORTS biography articles at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sports. GiantSnowman 22:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Injury icons in rosters
Currently many football articles use Injury icon.svg or Injury icon 2.svg in team rosters to mark injured players. There are many problems associated with this, as discussed here. To me, this seems to be in violation of another Wikipedia guideline, namely because both the Swiss flag and the red cross have their separate legitimate purposes. Additionally, both symbols are regulated by international and US federal laws (for the Swiss flag: and ; for the red cross:  ao. and ), and although there is no legal problem using the Swiss flag, the situation with the red cross is far more difficult. Note that even if the use of the image might be legal in the US, it might not be elsewhere.

Is there a chance that another image (such as an adhesive bandage, a wheel chair or a star of life) or a relevant abbreviation (INJ, IR, ...) could be used to mark injured players? Alternatively, the injured players could be left unmarked, for reasons noted in the old discussion? --SaMi ✉ 16:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What is the point in marking injured players in team rosters anyway? Either with flags or something else else? It seems excessively detailed and recentism. And what is the treshold for what is an injury? A player that had to leave the training ground because of a painful toe? One week in where a player can't compete. To me this just seem to create more problems than it solves and reeks of recentism. Just remove it. Rettetast (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree entirely with Rettetast on this. Marking players as injured is excesively detailed and recentist. However, if for some reason (although I cannot think of any) such an indication is required, I would suggest the use of a text abreviation. To me the wheelchair symbol implies a handicap and something a lot more permanent than a typical football injury. The star of life to me is a medical symbol, and if I saw it next to a player would probably assume that the player has some medical function in the team. A bandadge is not a bad allternative, but a text abreviation seams a lot more clear. But then again this is all speculation for a situation that probably doesn't exist. Sir Sputnik (talk) 16:35, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete on sight. Per WP:RECENTISM, WP:OR, WP:BLP (must be a BLP violation having any sort of unsourced injury indicator next to a person's name), MOS:, to name but a few. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Deleted some, but others remain. Made me wonder what e.g. an Iranian footballer would think seeing a cross next to their name... --SaMi ✉ 17:46, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Rettetast is spot on - who determines what an injury is, and what do we do if someone forgets to add/remove an injury logo? They should never have been introduced and they certainly shouldn't be continued...GiantSnowman 17:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly agree with the removal of these icons, for the reasons given above. Knepflerle (talk) 21:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As do I. Fire at Will! – PeeJay 22:01, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Most instances using those two templates have been cleaned up - if any other similar templates are spotted please link to them here. Best, Knepflerle (talk) 23:01, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

There are still rather a lot of instances of both icons being used; see and. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * All remaining uses are now in ice hockey and netball. Though it may be worth mentioning our objections to people involved with those articles, it rather falls outside of the scope of this wikiproject... --Pretty Green (talk) 07:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right – I should have looked a bit close at the list of links.  Cheers.    Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 08:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've informed the netball project, and they will take care of it, but would someone talk to the ice hockey people? And AFAIK, basketball and other projects use similar but different icons. Thanks a lot, --SaMi ✉ 19:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Without looking at which articles the icons are used in, my understanding is that at least the National Hockey League uses an official injury reporting system like other North American sports leagues, so recognized injuries are verifiable. Mosmof (talk) 01:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They may be verifiable, but they still fall foul of guidelines such as WP:Recentism and the Manual of Style.  Big  Dom  05:57, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

For future reference and cleanup, File:Cruz_Roja.svg is being likewise (ab)used. Knepflerle (talk) 15:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Goal.com about Faty Papy
The article on Faty Papy says that he "was suggested to be one of the 10 African Players to Watch in 2009 by the famous sports magazine Goal." Is Goal.com a reliable source? 94.212.31.237 (talk) 12:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a reliable source for itself. If the article just said "he is one of the 10 African players to watch this year" then that would be inappropriate, but it's fine to point out that a magazine labelled him as such. Goal.com is a notable enough source. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

League teams in Europe table
There is discussion about the topic here. Kingjeff (talk) 16:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Featured list being messed with
Unfortunately, I have been stuck in an edit-war with (known annoyance) User:Jamen Somasu over the List of Copa Libertadores winners article. He seems to think his edits constitute an improvement over the existing article. Seeing as the article already has "featured list" status, I don't see how his edits constitute an improvement. I urge someone reasonable get involved because the edit war seems to have no end in sight (thanks to stubbornness) and we've already past the three-edit mark already (not good). Thanks in advance. Digirami (talk) 16:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunetly, User:Digirami is thinking he owns wikipedia and that is not the case. Check my contributions and you will all see that I have contributed greatly to expand on the Copa Libertadores article and its subsubjects. As you will find in most South American club pages, a format for winners has been adopted and I had just implemented it on the Copa Libertadores section itself. The format is far simpler to update, much easier to understand and it is eye-friendlier than the mess created two years ago. Dirigami doesn't seem to understand that the old format was implemented for European Cup finals (they are single matches). Copa Libertadores finals are two-legged (sometimes three in the old days) and many of the functions of the old format is redundant for the Copa Libertadores (not the case for UEFA competitions).


 * I propose we have a vote between the new and old format. If my format is seemed better efficient, the page stays as it is. If not, we can change it back to its original form. Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Worse could be said about you. Your history of disruptive edits have caused simple pages to be locked (2010 Copa Libertadores and 2009 Copa Libertadores this year) and have made several users revert your edits despite repeated warning (like the Catalan flag issue with in the 2009-10 UEFA Champions League).
 * The current format works more than wonderfully since it has already made lists from UEFA and CONMEBOL into featured lists. That's a good thing in terms of quality, appearance, etc, etc. Why mess with that? Digirami (talk) 16:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As I have said, we will have a vote between the new and old format. If my format is seemed better efficient, the page stays as it is. If not, we can change it back to its original form. Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, if you want a vote, here's an idea: stop editing to your version. Keep it at the original. Digirami (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Jamen, please keep in mind that there is something like a bold-revert-discuss cycle, so constant reverts and re-reverts of the page do not help anybody here. Please keep also in mind that a vote is not a substitute for discussion (see also WP:VOTE). That being said, the two-leg format of the Copa Libertadores Finals does not improve the readability of either format.
 * If I had to pick the lesser evil between these two, though, it would be this version as it presents the information a tad more on the WP:NPOV side. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 17:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The edit history of this article is a shame. I have blocked both editorrs for a short period of time for edit warring. The article has been protected and I am opening a section for discussion at Talk:List of Copa Libertadores winners. Note that the protection is not an endorsement of the current version. Rettetast (talk) 17:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, can you at least put this on the discussion board to be voted on BY ADMINISTRATORS involved on the football project and co. and not simply friends of his? Thanks.

Old format (Dirigami):

New format (used widely now for South American club competition):

As wikipedias, we should always strive for simpler and better. Jamen Somasu (talk) 17:18, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to advise, changes to article formats are not decided by vote, and even if they were, admins' votes do not count for more than those of other editors..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As i've said on the talk page i prefer the first version. When a game is over two legs i like to see how a team has done over those two legs. Did they win or even just score away from home and then come back to their home ground and thrash the other team? The second version doesn't tell you clearly which order the matches were played and which side had home advantage in the second leg. A casual observer like me isn't going to know if Montevideo is in Uruguay without leaving the page. Uksam88 (talk) 11:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I favor the new version. The older version is kind of messy considering at first sight you don't know who the winner was and the list's main concern is... the winner. Secondly, seeing as many of the same teams have reached the Copa Libertadores final several times, some teams would appear twice as much in the old version than in the new version. Uksam88, I understand your concern about the location of the legs so I think we can leave in the location field in the newer version. As for the country field, I think that can be replaced with a flag next to the team. As far as the quality is concerned, the older version needs to be revised/edited as it is because I've noticed some teams like Peñarol are wiki-linked in some finals and not wiki-linked as in others. The list needs some minor changes, if we are not to adopt the newer version.


 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

!width=5%|Year !width=20%|Winner !width=5%|Score !width=20%|Runner-up !width=20%|Venues !width=20%|Location !width=1% class="unsortable"|Refs
 * rowspan="3"|1960 Details
 * rowspan="2"| Peñarol
 * 1–0
 * rowspan="2"| Olimpia
 * Estadio Centenario
 * Montevideo, Uruguay
 * rowspan=3 align=center|
 * 1–1
 * Estadio de Puerto Sajonia
 * Asunción, Paraguay
 * colspan="5"|Peñarol won 3–1 on points
 * }
 * So this is my proposal for the list. Here we know who was home in the first leg and the second leg. Soccer-holic, why would the version you linked be a tad more on the WP:NPOV?
 * I did use the newer version for the Copa Sudamericana a while back and no one objected nor had anyone tried to change it to the version found in the List of Copa Libertadores winners. --MicroX (talk) 07:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * }
 * So this is my proposal for the list. Here we know who was home in the first leg and the second leg. Soccer-holic, why would the version you linked be a tad more on the WP:NPOV?
 * I did use the newer version for the Copa Sudamericana a while back and no one objected nor had anyone tried to change it to the version found in the List of Copa Libertadores winners. --MicroX (talk) 07:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * MicroX, your version is actually a tad better than mine and I like it! It definetly solves a lot of the problems of the obsolete one. That has my vote! Jamen Somasu (talk) 18:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Better, yes. Flawless, no. As a wikipedian who knows nothing about these clubs or Argentinian football this does not solve the home/away dilemma. The location only helps with that if you know where the team is from (you should not have to click through to find this out). As such, I still don't see the home team as adequately denoted to suceed the old (and yes I agree more cluttered) version. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  18:36, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with RR, he pretty much has said everything. By the way, the three-point rule for a win was not introduced before the 1980s (in England) on a regular basis. So unless CONMEBOL was ahead of its time, I'm 99 percent sure that two points were awarded for a win instead of three. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 18:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * That's why the flags are next to the team name. You are correct; it was 2 points for a win in those times but I don't know why you are mentioning this if it is already displayed. Peñarol won a match and tied which means 3 points in the old point system. --MicroX (talk) 19:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * D'oh! Sorry, my bad, it was a plain old calculation error. *reassembles brain calculation unit* --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 19:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * For Rambo's Revenge, it is a pretty consencus everywhere that the first leg is above and the second leg below. You can see that in a good number of pages i.e. the UEFA Super Cup, Copa Sudamericana, Recopa Sudamericana, UEFA Cup, among others. If clicking ONCE on the city hurts you that much, I am sorry. But in every football page (UEFA and CONMEBOL specifically) it doesn't take a genious to figure out, by themselves and not nothing NOTHING of the sport, what chronological order is. If the years are descending from top to bottom, common sense can only tell you that the first leg would also be on the top. We are an encyclopedia, yes, and we are suppose to KISS, yes, but we can't expect ourselves to be redundantly showing things that any person with the least amount of common sense would know. I know you are European so try to understand that there are many different things in UEFA that simply wouldn't go well for CONMEBOL (likewise the reverse).


 * And I am going to take back what I said about MicroX's format. Do we really need to have a "location" section when we have the national flags of each club next to them? Just clicking on the city would tell anyone where the city is from and THAT is what we are trying to do: make our format far less redundant and cleaner (and I doubt anyone goes to a sports page to find information about cities and nations. The cities are there mainly for FYI purposes than anything else). The stadium and city should be more than enough. I don't know jack about the Champions Cup of Europe or Europe itself. However, if I want to find the capital of France (London, Paris, something, I don't know) I just have to click on their winner's list and click on a city. It is as simple as that. We provide information, not cure lazyness. Jamen Somasu (talk) 19:39, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If the "cure lazyness" comment had any substance you just make a list linking each of the finals (e.g. ..., 1992, 1993, ...) and clicking through would give all the information you need. That isn't how it works. Try taking the perspective of other wikipedians instead of thinking the world is against you. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  15:46, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If changing the list to the new one means endangering the featured list status, then we should stay with the old list. However, who determines the featured list status? I do have a concern though; what's with the country display? Isn't the flag enough. --MicroX (talk) 20:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, the flag would not be enough, see also WP:MOSFLAG for more information. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 20:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I read it. What is it exactly you want me to look at from the WP:MOSFLAG? --MicroX (talk) 20:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It says that, upon their first use, flags should be accompanied by the name of the country they represent. In a list, it makes far more sense to accompany all flags with the country name. – PeeJay 20:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And? There is already another table for results by country to determine which nation has won the most Copa Libertadores; that table has flag AND name so that takes care of that rule above. The only thing to do is switch the Results section and the Finals section around. AND...as you so willingly ignored and failed to mention, the rule also says that "the country name may be omitted if a flag appears with its country name earlier in a list or table. When a flag icon is needed more than once, the flag-and-name template, for example 🇯🇵 Japan, or its shorter variant  should be used first, but may be reduced to  in subsequent uses." Problem solved! Jamen Somasu (talk) 23:30, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think swapping the order of the tables would be a good idea. The list of finals should come first, and then the analysis of the results. – PeeJay 23:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Re:Jamen) Not exactly. The country table appears after, not before the entire list of winners (or earlier as stated by the MOS). Sorry man, we're stuck with the old table. Though as soon as the thing is unprotected I'll get right on fixing the wiki-links and the italics/bolding incosistency. --MicroX (talk) 23:39, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Re-indent)You guys are UEFA people so in your case I understand. However, we are CONMEBOL and we do things differently. That is why I keep repeating that, as two different confederations, the same things can't apply to us as to you and the same way around. We can simply flip the tables. It is far easier that way. There isn't any rule that says it has to be the UEFA way, is there? Besides, it specifically says that "The country name may be omitted if a flag appears with its country name earlier in a list or table. When a flag icon is needed more than once, the flag-and-name template, for example, or its shorter variant  should be used first, but may be reduced to  in subsequent uses. However, some editors feel that some tables such as those containing sports statistics (example) are easier to read if  is used throughout." As you can clearly see in the example, not all flags are country-named and they don't have any predecessors before that are named i.e. England and South Korea. Especially true on sports pages, you can't expect to have the country name next to every flag. There are far too many articles around that doesn't including in UEFA i.e. UEFA Cup Winner's Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, Intercontinental Cup, the UEFA Intercities page, whatnot......to many to name. The point is, we expect the rules to be applied to EVERYONE or none at all. In other words, this "rule" is highly impractical and should be reviewed in the case of sports pages. Jamen Somasu (talk) 00:00, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not a CONMEBOL-UEFA dispute. You do know that the new format appeared in the Copa Sudamericana article on July 10, 2009 and I only did it to clean up the older one which was messy, in my opinion. I don't see any harm in dropping the one I had put in the Copa Sudamericana for the Libertadores winners list. --MicroX (talk) 00:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, this has nothing to do with some sort of CONMEBOL-UEFA rivalry. This is about Wikipedia's standards. – PeeJay 00:12, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Re:Jamen) First, this isn't the UEFA way; this is the two-legged finals way. Second,the example you linked doesn't have the Featured List status. Third, in Copa Libertadores season articles, there is a list where the flag appears with the country name prior to the body of the article and that is the qualification table. Fourth, a list and season articles will have different tendencies due to space, structure, and size. Fifth, it isn't a rule; it's a manual of style. --MicroX (talk) 01:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope for your sake you know how to read. I would like you to point out where I said anything about a rivalry. I don't care about UEFA. I really don't. Now...if you are done putting words in my mouth, understand the UEFA usually uses SINGLE finals where CONMEBOL uses TWO-LEGGED finals...really, it doesn't take much ingenuity to figure out that one table format isn't going to be the best thing for both confederations (as much as one says it is wiki standards, it has begun being "UEFA" standard and everyone is forced to follow suit). I don't see why we are discussing to such great lenghts...all it takes is a little bit of common sense to understand that both confederations are different. That is the whole point of the "new" table: to eliminate many of the redundant crap that is used on the old table to make it eye-frienlier and easy to update. It makes no difference how the "new table" came to be. All it matters is that, for CONMEBOL, it makes far more sense to have it. Jamen Somasu (talk) 01:42, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There are two instance where a UEFA competition used a two-legged final: the first Cup Winners' Cup and the Intertoto Cup. The lists of the winners of those competitions are featured lists. And guess what the is the format used for the two-legged tie section (look here and here). Both confederations are different, but that doesn't mean the lists have to be. Digirami (talk) 03:00, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And let's not forget the UEFA Super Cup. Digirami (talk) 03:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And the UEFA Cup --MicroX (talk) 03:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And you are not hearing me: I could care less about UEFA. Really...my dog's crap matters more to me than any UEFA thing. We are CONMEBOL. And as a wikipedian, I was under the impression that we use the KISS...after all, we are always striving to make updated versions of tables, formats, etc. For UEFA, you can go about and have a table that repeats the same crap over and over again. That's your issue, I could care less. This issue is not whether you like it or not; it is whether is better than the old format or not and so far it has been yes. The ones objecting this simply want to keep everything lined-up as UEFA. And there are even those who aren't even updaters of CONMEBOL pages having opinions here. Baffling to see so much resistence against the simpler and better. Jamen Somasu (talk) 03:38, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It has nothing to do whether UEFA does it one way or not, or if this matter is affects a CONMEBOL-related article. It affects a football-related article and that why editors (those more interested in CONMEBOL articles or not) are saying their opinions. And UEFA-related articles happen to hit a good/great idea sooner than others because when compared to other confederations, more people pay attention to UEFA. That allows them to establish consensus a lot quicker and easier than, let's say, CONMEBOL related one. As the discussion so far has revealed, it seems that the format first used in UEFA articles (that format that made those list a featured ones) is the better/favored of the two. Digirami (talk) 04:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You tell me that usually UEFA uses single-legged finals and CONMEBOL uses two-legged finals. I tell you that UEFA used to use two-legged finals in several competitions and then you say you don't give a crap about UEFA; that's cheap, real cheap. Besides, most contributors agree in favor of the older format. I think you're the only one that disagrees. The list is a two-legged format; the only notable difference is the fact that CONMEBOL uses points and UEFA uses goals. Other than that, it's acceptable to use the table. I think this wraps this discussion. --MicroX (talk) 04:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The fact still remains: the new format is better for CONMEBOL. No one can't deny that. I was only citing the UEFA tourneys as an example. Besides that, I don't care about them. No one has given a good or even decent reason why we should get stuck with the old, obsolete format besides trying to be like UEFA. It's shameful that people want to block progress. Jamen Somasu (talk) 05:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think we are denying that. It has nothing to do with whether it is better for just CONMEBOL, per say. The people who designed the original format didn't think it to be UEFA specific, but rather to be applied across all confederations (as any table design should). That's the idea. And the format is superb since any list that has that format has already been made a featured list (which means the list is "professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items."). In addition, the editors who have commented in this section have already raised enough issues with your proposed format that haven't been addressed sufficiently. Your argument that it is "simpler" is subjective and it is nothing more than that. Digirami (talk) 05:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Digirami, you are absolutely right. This has nothing to do with tables being "better for UEFA/CONMEBOL/Confederation X", but better for the football project as a whole. Obviously, if a table has functionality that is irrelevant to a particular competition, it should be removed; similarly, if extra functionality is required, it should be added. As it happens, the table that already exists is appropriate for the list, so there is no need to change it. – PeeJay 06:49, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Just an explanation of flags and featured lists: A featured list has to meet various criteria, one of which is compliance with the Manual of Style. This includes compliance with the section of MOS:ICON headed Accompany flags with country names. If the country name wasn't used alongside the flag, the list wouldn't be acceptable as a featured list. It wouldn't lose its status instantly. Probably a note would be left on the talk page saying what needed fixing, and if it got fixed fairly immediately, then that would be fine. If not, it would go to Featured list removal, and reviewers there would expect it to be brought up to current standards, which are rather stricter than when this particular one gained featured status, within a couple of weeks. If it wasn't, it would lose its featured status. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes it does. Over here, nothing gets done unless it goes through UEFA. I had yet still to hear of a good reason why we are still stuck on an old, obsolete format besides that UEFA uses it. Dirigami simply is a "yes, ma'am": he does anything a Euro tells him. And from the looks of some in here, some of you are good friends providing a great conflict of interests. The very neutrality of this is highly questionable is the past 15 messages and, while ultimately there is nothing wrong with that, it has now started affecting wikipedia as this has turned into a club. If you feel it is an insult, it isn't. I am simply telling it like it is.


 * We are CONMEBOL (REAL South Americans). And we are way too different from UEFA to have the same standards. Our top club competition is not some cheap copy of the lame UEFA Champions League like the other confederations, thus, why it is still Copa Libertadores. If you can't understand that, at least respect it.


 * The fact still remains: the new format is better for CONMEBOL. No one can't deny that. I would like to see a good reason or two.Jamen Somasu (talk) 13:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You've been given several good reasons already. If you choose to ignore them, that's your problem, not the community's. We are not going to pander to you just because you kick up a bit of a stink every time someone disagrees with you. – PeeJay 14:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat incredibly, this has now moved over to a request for arbitration, although how long it'll stay there, I can't say. Not sure the arbs are interested in what appears to be a very trivial (not even content but presentation) dispute. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:33, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a more concise version of what I was trying to say in my statement over there. It's bloody ridiculous that it's got to this stage. – PeeJay 14:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Dude, the audacity of your statement is out there. You are CONMEBOL? You are real South American? Since when? I thought you were Catalan or Costa Rican. But that's besides the point. To claim that you are the only one interested in South American articles is the audacious statement. Myself and MicroX are probably the primary reps for South America in the WikiProject (and I am South American). Us two, along with several other editors, focus most of our Wiki attention on South American leagues, teams, and competitions. And if we have no problem with the design of the table that can be used across ALL confederations, then you need to reconsider your stance "we are CONMEBOL, we are different" on the issue. A two-legged tie is a two-leeged tie anywhere in the world. A table for such shouldn't be different because of where the tie took place. You also need to come to the realization that even though the bulk of your attention on this site is on South American football articles, that does not mean they have to be developed in isolation from UEFA articles or CONCACAF articles or OFC articles. South American football articles fall under the scope of this project, so all opinions are welcomed and taken equally in stride. Digirami (talk) 14:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactly! For it to get this far because some people here are crying about a new table that doesn't go along with their personal wants...ridiculous! Jamen Somasu (talk) 19:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Or if an existing one that doesn't go with someone's wants. Digirami (talk) 19:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (Re-Jamen) What are you talking about? Your statement, "Over here, nothing gets done unless it goes through UEFA," is false. We try to do things as best as we can for CONMEBOL so it addresses CONMEBOL appropriately. Yes we borrow ideas from UEFA articles but we do not copy everything they do. Even Digirami has said in the past that CONMEBOL articles should not be carbon copies of UEFA articles. The Copa Libertadores articles are the perfect examples that we don't follow all of UEFA's way. There is a qualification table because in CONMEBOL because there are different ways of qualifying in South America. There is a seeding format because Libertadores uses seeding, not a draw. Even the aggregate scores were questioned because CONMEBOL use points in all rounds. Even the round names have been changed to their appropriate name (i.e. first stage, second stage; not preliminary round or group stage). In regular domestic season articles we have changed the article page names because seasons are carried out differently in South America. That should be enough evidence that we do "do things" differently for CONMEBOL articles. --MicroX (talk) 22:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Calming this down
Wow. This has gotten way out of hand, and some of the stuff I've seen on user talk over the last 24 hours does not reflect very well at all on people who should know better by now. The ArbCom case has, predictably, been rejected in favour of actual dispute resolution. Where exactly are we with this? A quick summary of the arguments for and against the new formats (minus all the adolescent bickering and nationalist nonsense) would be a good start. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunetly, talking hasn't worked out so I am not going to the same things that bring no results.Jamen Somasu (talk) 11:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it would helpful to discuss the point in hand, rather than start stating that "I'm this" and "you're that". Comment on the content, not the editors.  The Rambling Man (talk) 12:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Talking is the only way anyone is getting out of here, short of administrative action. I can assure you that if administrative action is involved again that it isn't going to be to your benefit. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This is how I see it.
 * Old format - Pros - WP:MOSFlag; displays who was home and away better; displays city's country. Cons - Winner of finals not instantly obvious; team names will appear twice as much.
 * New format - Pros - Winner of finals is obvious; team names appear once in each year. Cons - country flags may not be known to all readers; city's do not display country. --MicroX (talk) 01:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Another pro is that is that the current can even be expanded to include the playoff match (in the earlier years); scores don't have to be adjusted to the position of the winner and the runner-up in the table (giving you an more accurate scoreline). Digirami (talk) 02:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Wait what? I think it would be a con in the home team-away team format because in the playoff there is no home team and expanding the playoff would be misleading. --MicroX (talk) 05:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. I think we've reached consensus and the List of Copa Libertadores winners should be unprotected. --MicroX (talk) 11:25, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Renaming "List of X players" to "List of X players with at least Y appearances"
Hello,

I've nominated a List of Athletic Bilbao players for FL, but an editor thinks that capping off at 200 caps is arbitrary. Since this applies to all "List of X players" I'd appreciate some community input on this one. Is there an established consensus that capping off at some X-mark is okay? Cheers, Sandman888 (talk) 20:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just out of idle curiosity, I pulled together what an "uncapped" list would look like here. It's just over 150KB in size...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So WP:LENGTH cd be an argument for arbitrary capping? Sandman888 (talk) 08:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. The baseball players list that KV5 pointed you to in the FLC is only 44KB, but then it is just a list of names, with no additional information at all...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:38, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (c&p arguments from FLC below).


 * "I looked at the discussion; there have been few comments, and WP:LENGTH is not a reason to create an arbitrary cutoff for this list. However, as a WP:SPLIT, it does support renaming this article, and then creating a second list for players with less than 200 appearances. As for this FLC, if that discussion is going to continue, then this nomination should be placed on hold pending its outcome. If not, then this list should be renamed. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 6:22 pm, Today (UTC+2)"
 * So if I renamed to List of Athletic Bilbao players with at least 200 caps that would be okay with you? Also, should all the other "List of X players" be taken to FLRC to comply with this? Sandman888 (talk) 7:20 pm, Today (UTC+2)
 * I would prefer "appearances" to caps, but yes, that would satisfy me. I wouldn't make the change to any other lists yet or go to FLRC. The best course of action is to make the move here, see if this FLC passes, and then start a separate discussion at WT:FOOTY saying that consensus has determined that the inclusion criteria should be clear in the title. Then the project can go about moving the lists on its own timetable instead of flooding FLRC. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 7:41 pm, Today (UTC+2)


 * (end of c&p)

I would appreciate if we could form a consensus here and now, that would be more correct instead of setting a precedent with a small number of parties involved. Sandman888 (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to that. In the case of my team, the list (actually two) for players with lower numbers of appearances already exist, and I did think it looked a bit silly that the one for players with the highest apps did not have such a qualifier in the title.  If I ever manage to reduce the number of redlinks among the players with fewer apps, I might take them to FLC too, but that's a long way off I think.  Just to reiterate, though, "caps" should definitely not be in the title, that word is not used to refer to appearances for a club in English -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:11, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Consensus

 * I think we should have some propositions, under which one can indicate support and/or comment, so at least the footy project can have a clear consensus on this matter. It seems to me that there exists three different ways of making player-lists. Sandman888 (talk) 11:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Proposition I: all "List of X players" be renamed to "List of X players with Y appearances"


 * Proposition II: all "List of X players" will keep the current format.


 * Proposition III: lists are renamed according to prop I if there are several player-lists of the same club, otherwise name according to prop II.
 * Support, this makes most sense to me. It doesn't affect most of the current lists naming, and prop I has the drawback that it implies there will be created several lists for X players, which will certainly not be the case. Sandman888 (talk) 13:57, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Lists of association football players by club
This category is getting pretty long by now, hadn't we better split it up by nation? GiantSnowman 08:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably a good idea. I've been making a lot of these for American teams. --JonBroxton (talk) 17:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What should the wording be? 'Lists of association football players by club in England'? 'Lists of association football players in England by club'? GiantSnowman 21:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd say the former would work best. --JonBroxton (talk) 22:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty busy at work at the mo, anybody fancy this project? GiantSnowman 01:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

www.allfootballers.com
This website seems to have disappeared - does anyone know what the position is? Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 07:54, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They've been working on a new version of the site for some time now, so it looks as though it might be coming quite soon. I think when it comes back online it will be much improved, with a database of all league matches, among other things. Big  Dom  08:03, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding images
I added an image to David Bellion's page from wikimedia commons. Am i allowed to do this? I thought i better ask before i do any more.Gobbleswoggler (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Definitely allowed, in fact it's encouraged. Do as many of these as you want, you will be improving the encyclopedia no end! Big  Dom  18:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Brian Robson, from Newcastle United to west Ham, 1971
on February 23, 1971 italian newspaper Corriere dello sport wrote West Ham signed this player from Newcastle for 120,000£, but I don't find him on wikipedia, possible? I was thinking to work on his italian wikipedia page, is it a joke italian nespaper did?93.32.224.47 (talk) 19:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's Bryan Robson, generally known as Pop Robson. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:33, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Jimmy McIntosh
I've just read that McIntosh was the first player to score five goals in one game. The reference doesn't assert whether this relates solely to Blackpool's records or football in general. Clarification would be appreciated. -  Dudesleeper  talk  19:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I imagine that it must have just been a first for Blackpool. It certainly wasn't the first time in the Football League; Burnley's Jimmy Ross scored 5 against Loughborough on 28 March 1898, and I would bet that it happened before that as well (but I only know about Burnley). Big  Dom  19:55, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've amended it accordingly. Ta muchly. -  Dudesleeper  talk  20:21, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Oldest Football Club in South America, Gimnasia y Esgrima (Argentina) or Lima Cricket (Peru)?
This is an interesting subject that could use some attention. Gimnasia y Esgrima was founded in 1887 as a social and sports organization. It was founded mainly for the practice of Gymnastics and Fencing (as their name states), but they also practiced Rugby, Football, Basketball, and Rugby. However, there is a funny matter going on in Peru nearly 28 years before the foundation of Gimnasia y Esgrima. In 1859, a group of Englishmen (possibly led by a person named Norman Evans) founded the Lima Cricket Club. Evans came to work in Peru for the company of Antony Gibbs & Sons, and he founded the club to practice cricket, football, and rugby. The club was mainly restricted to Englishmen since most Peruvians (if not all) did not know much about football. Lima Cricket explain this in their official website:.

However, the point of the matter here is whether this is original research (or not). If it is not, then the next question that comes up is which club is really the oldest in South America: Gimnasia y Esgrima (1887) or Lima Cricket (1859)? Both clubs claim the practice of football as part of their club's foundation, though in each case football was second to their title sports (Cricket for one and Gymnastics/Fencing for the other). I'll leave it up to the football project to decide.-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 23:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You wrote of Lima that they were playing "football, and rugby" in 1859? Under which football rules were they playing? Hack (talk) 00:09, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It says that in 1906, Lima Cricket becomes Lima Cricket and Football Club and that in 1986 the first football match occurred between Lima Cricket and Union Cricket. --MicroX (talk) 00:19, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you mean 1896 (Not 1986). The link you provide, MicroX, states that 1896 is when one of the first games realized in the city took place. However, it mentions nothing about club foundations. The question here is in regards to the oldest football club founded in South America, not the oldest game.
 * Hack, they don't mention under what rules it was founded: . All it states is that the Englishmen founded the club in order to practice in Peru the sports that they played in England (Rugby, Football, and Cricket), but that in Peru were non-existent.-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 01:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sheffield F.C. was founded in 1857. Lima Cricket in 1859. I would guess that they are playing under the same rules as Sheffield. Also, in regards to the name, "Gimnasia y Esgrima" don't have football in their name either. The name doesn't really represent the sports they play.-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 01:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're assuming that they were playing Sheffield Rules? Depending on the class or place of origin of the founders they could have been playing one of many football variations. Hack (talk) 01:52, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No. It's not a matter of assumption. Here's a direct quote from the article you provide;
 * "Six years after the creation of the Sheffield Rules the Football Association rules were created. These were influenced by the Sheffield game but ongoing disputes meant that the Sheffield rules continued to be used. During this time many of the elements of the rules were incorporated in to the association game. Regular games were played between Sheffield and London using both sets of rules. This led to an agreement on a single set of laws administered by the Football Association in 1877."
 * The matter that is certain is that they weren't playing under the "Laws of the Game" (these didn't come up until well after the times being discussed). However, this discussion is heading down the wrong way. Sheffield F.C. is awarded the title of being the oldest football club when they were founded on the Sheffield Rules (NOT the Laws of the Game). Similarly, Lima Cricket was NOT founded under the laws of the game, but that does not take out that they were founded in 1859.-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 12:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Getting back to the original point: it would be original research to declare either to be the oldest club in South America without a reliable source specifically saying that. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good point. No, I don't think I can find a reliable source to support the claim. However, based on the evidence, it would be erroneous to claim that Gimnasia y Esgrima are the oldest football club in South America.-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 23:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Does an article currently say that? Is it referenced? If so, we can't refute it with original research. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 06:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They have the following reference in the article, . The claim is in the second paragraph. This is the club's official website. They not only claim to be the oldest club in South America, but rather they claim to be the oldest football club in the Americas (both North and South). Should this claim be taken as factual? Is it not an exceptional claim, which would therefore need an exceptional source? Is the club's website an exceptional source?-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 17:04, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm late to the discussion here, but the simplest course of action is to not worry about whether the "oldest" claim is factual, but simply state that both clubs claim to be the oldest. That's what's done for my alma mater, one of three public universities that claim to be the oldest public university in the United States. --Mosmof (talk) 18:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That is a good solution, but the problem here is that Gimnasia y Esgrima (from Argentina) claim in their website that they are the oldest football club in the Americas. However, the Lima Cricket and Football Club (From Peru) do not make this claim. Yet, Lima Cricket was founded in 1859 while Gimnasia y Esgrima was founded in 1887. Something is obviously wrong. Hence comes the question as to what should be done?-- MarshalN20 | T a l k 04:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The article on Gimnasia y Esgrima should say "claims to be the oldest", rather than "is the oldest". The other article should not say anything about being the oldest. If readers want to interpret it as such then so be it, but without a reliable secondary source doing it for use it would be original research to go any further. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:58, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Move request: C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul to Cruz Azul
Last week I discovered that the Mexican football club Cruz Azul is named C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul. To begin with this recommends that we stay away from abbreviations in titles. Second, the C.D.S.C. just looks nasty. In addition, I doubt anyone calls the team C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul. The club is generally known as football as Cruz Azul. The page name Cruz Azul redirects to C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul anyway. I request it be moved to Cruz Azul. I believe the article name Cruz Azul meets the WP:NAME requirements of recognizable, easy to find, precise, concise and consistent. --MicroX (talk) 09:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But there are two clubs called Cruz Azul - the other plays in Honduras. I think it's fairly standard practice to include the abbreviations in the titles of football clubs even if removing them would not cause confusion, see the featured articles Aston Villa F.C., Blackburn Olympic F.C. and Sheffield Wednesday F.C.. Dancarney (talk) 09:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes but the Honduran C.D. Cruz Azul is a minor second division team considering Cruz Azul isn't a disambiguation page. Cruz Azul simply redirects to C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul. The Honduran club even appears on the C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul page as as For the Honduran football team, see C.D. Cruz Azul. And yes you are correct that it is fairly common practice for abbreviations in football clubs however, they need to be sourced. For instance, Brazilian football club Internacional was previously titled SC Internacional on Wikipedia; however it was moved to Sport Club Internacional because that is how it was addressed as on the club website. Similarly, Cruz Azul is addressed as Cruz Azul on the club website. Another case is Sao Paulo. This club was Sao Paulo Futebol Clube and moved to Sao Paulo FC because it appeared as such on the club website. --MicroX (talk) 10:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I note that the (Mexican) Cruz Azul's website calls the club "Club Deportivo Social Y Cultural Cruz Azul A.C.". Dancarney (talk) 10:50, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Correct, but C.D.S.C. Cruz Azul is not used nor is it recognizable. São Paulo's page name is abbreviated São Paulo FC because it appears as such on its club website. However this is not Cruz Azul's case therefore the abbreviations are not appropriate. WP:NAME suggests the following:
 * Recognizable – Using names and terms commonly used in reliable sources, and so likely to be recognized, for the topic of the article.
 * Easy to find – Using names and terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article (and to which editors will most naturally link from other articles).
 * Precise – Using names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
 * Concise – Using names and terms that are brief and to the point. (Even when disambiguation is necessary, keep that part brief.)
 * Consistent – Using names and terms that follow the same pattern as those of other similar articles.
 * This is why it should be moved. --MicroX (talk) 11:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well-put. I concur that this would be a good move; presently our conventions regarding consistency of abbreviation are country-specific, so there's no need for a Mexican team to follow the conventions we use for English teams. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It is not standard practice to add abbreviations to the football club's article title unless it needs disambiguation. Clubs in the UK had "F.C." or "A.F.C." added to the titles for a reason I can't recall at the moment. Sao Paulo had "FC" added to their article title to disambiguate it from the city. The most notable example that you do not need abbreviations added to a club's article title is Boca Juniors (among others in South America).
 * I just have one quick question: what the relationship between the club(s) Cruz Azul and Cementos Cruz Azul, a Mexican cement company? Is the club named after the company or the other way around? I think that maybe a reason why "CDSC" was added to the article title (although no article exists for the cement company). Digirami (talk) 18:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is something about Cementos Cruz Azul in the club's history page --MicroX (talk) 03:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Cemento Cruz Azul has it's own article, so I think moving the football club to Cruz Azul would be fine. I've never heard the cement business shortened to just Cruz Azul (it always is referred to as Cementos Cruz Azul or Cemento Cruz Azul). Jogurney (talk) 15:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (reindent) So in the Mexican context, Cruz Azul can mean both the cement company and the football club. One is a multinational corporation (I know for sure they have facilities here in Miami) and one is named after the other. I think we have to consider the notion that because we are the football people, we may think that Cruz Azul is the best title for the football club article. Perhaps it would be best if "Cruz Azul" was a disambiguation page. Digirami (talk) 22:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't see why. A hatnote for the company would be fine. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:00, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Cemento Cruz Azul already has its page article and its fine the way it is. --MicroX (talk) 03:16, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Festival of Britain
Several challenge matches took place during the above festival (see the England v. Argentina poster here). There was also a few Anglo-Scottish friendlies, plus Blackpool v. Rennes. None of this is mentioned in the article, which seems to be an oversight. -  Dudesleeper  talk  22:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * West Bromwich Albion played two Festival of Britain matches, against SC Wacker and Floriana. Not sure where we would get a full list of all matches though. --Jameboy (talk) 14:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding images
I sometimes add images to footballers' pages from wikimedia commons. Does anyone know any other websites? Gobbleswoggler (talk) 19:53, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Some of the images on Flickr are suitable for Wikipedia, although most of them are not. Have a look at WP:FLICKR for more information about that. Otherwise, most of the images on the Internet are copyrighted, unfortunately. Big  Dom  19:58, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (EC)Flickr has a lot of CC-licensed images. FIST is a great tool for searching for images. You can for instance search for a whole category of articles at once. This link searches for appropriate images for all Norwegian footballers. Follow the link and change the category if you want to search in another category. Rettetast (talk) 20:06, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

UEFA player template
I've just made a new template UEFA player. Please see Mikel Arteta for how it can be used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBigJagielka (talk • contribs) 02:01, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Fantasy Premier League 2009-10 Wiki League final standings
I am very disappointed to finish third having been in first place from the start of the season until March!--EchetusXe 10:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 4th place? Oh man...although in fairness I was travelling from December onwards so my team has remained completely unchanged throughout...oh well, congrats to Sam Moran, whoever you may be! GiantSnowman 18:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Updating footballers stats
Someone who has the IP address 80.80.171.144 is updating footballers appearances and goals but not changing the date opposite the pcupdate or club-update parameter. I have warned him three times but he is still carrying on not changing the date. can someone go to his user talk page and explain to him how to do it properly. Gobbleswoggler (talk) 15:54, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There's very little you could do I'm afraid. I would think there is next to no chance that an IP address would be blocked over such a small (although slightly annoying) matter, since that address can be used by more than one person. All that can be done is to sort out the edits they make, and be thankful that the season has ended and they won't be able to do it for a while now (one of the very few virtues of having no football during the summer)! I don't think it would be that helpful for someone else to leave a message on the talk page; it seems pretty clear that your advice has been ignored so I don't see why anybody else's would be heeded. Big  Dom  16:54, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Please don't yell at other editors. It is a request, rather than a demand, that editors bump the update time when editing the totals. I forget about it all the time. Better that we have IPs helpfully keeping the totals up to date than that they are scared off. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

infobox help
I want to add the team's website to FK_Partizan Can someone add this field, as it does not appear to be there? (LAz17 (talk) 00:10, 11 May 2010 (UTC)).
 * On most club articles, it is in the external links section at the end of the article. Kevin McE (talk) 07:24, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Infobox football club supports a  parameter. I've added the club website to the infobox. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Table ordering
I hope I didn't imagine this, but isn't there a guideline that says that chronological lists should start with the oldest entry at the top and the newest entry at the bottom? I ask because User:MickMacNee has created Premier League Golden Boot with the newest entry at the top and the oldest at the bottom. He also claims that the table looks "ridiculous" the other way up. Does anyone know the answer to this? – PeeJay 16:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Stand-alone lists. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, lists go in chronological order. It's not ridiculous, it's logical. You don't write a lead in reverse-chronological order so why order the list contents backwards?  The Rambling Man (talk) 17:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Quite, but it was still entirely unproductive to edit war over it until the 3RR limit (even while discussion was ongoing on talk) before taking it to a wider forum. In the specific case of MickMacNee, if this happens again I'd consider taking it straight to any of the various admins who have blocked him in the past. Don't bother with ANI. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Managerial changes terminology
Hi all. I was recently involved in a discussion with User:Somali123 regarding the terminology to use with the managerial changes. What the user did was to change all occurrences of "Sacked" with "Contract Terminated": however this is very incorrect in Italy, since contract don't actually get terminated when a manager is sacked, but they are still under effect (which means that a club is forced to pay salaries as long as the contract stands) and the club can actually decide to call such removed manager back at his position whenever they want - which is common practice in Italy, especially in lower divisions (this year's Serie B was kind of a record in such sense). Please have your say about that. --Angelo (talk) 22:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As always, the best thing to do is to follow what reliable sources say. In general, interpreting dismissal is a very bad idea because we're very rarely privy to the specific details of the dismissal and there are any number of possible outcomes. People should certainly not be unilaterally changing the terminology used in articles en masse. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Especially if that is the case in Italy, that wording should be reverted. – PeeJay 23:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The word "sacked" (or its US equivalent "fired") are not particularly good English, nor very encyclopaedic. Perhaps "dismissed" would be more appropriate. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 05:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

FootballIDRIVEpast
Any input here would be useful, if it is still open. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 00:25, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

World Cup templates
Someone has already created the Honduras squad template, should it be deleted, or should it stay? Since the world cup is still around a month from now.  GoPurple  'n  Gold24   01:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If the 23-man squad of Honduras is confirmed the template should stay. chandler 01:22, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed. It is counterproductive to waste time deleting templates which are evidently going to be recreated through necessity within a month's time. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 02:34, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Football Club History Database (FCHD)
has been "unavailable at this time" for several days now. Anybody know anything? The old btinternet-hosted version is still there, but there's a lot of stuff been added in the last 3 years that isn't on that version. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I would say prod (not in the WP sense :-) ) User:Richard Rundle, whose site it is, but he seems to have retired from WP. He's a regular on the forum at the late Tony Kempster's site, so anyone who's a member there could drop him a line.  I'm a member but can't access it at work.  I'll leave a message later if nobody else gets there first...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * thanks, Struway2 (talk) 08:19, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Any news? Hopefully its just down because Richard is updating everything. It would be a great shame if its gone for good. Argyle 4 Life  talk  11:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Association Football competitions
Any opinions on WikiProject Association Football competitions? More specifically – is this new project really needed at all? According to its scope, it "covers the creation and editing of articles related [to] Association Football competitions, it's clubs, it's players and it's stadiums", or in other words, a large majority of articles also covered by WP:FOOTY. Furthermore, I can't find an entry at COUNCIL/P for this project which would be a step of the standard procedure for creating a new WikiProject, but it exists nevertheless. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 16:59, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I raised the same points at this new project's talk page. I don't think that it should exist as a WikiProject, but perhaps as a task force with a more limited scope, but then we'd be getting close to the scope of the season article task force. Maybe the two should be merged. – PeeJay 17:03, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The user who created this is applying their assessment tag to pages which are clearly covered already by this project, ie various football clubs and season articles. This project should be changed into a task force of this project. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 06:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * So how do we go about getting it closed? – PeeJay 06:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There was no authorisation for its creation. I don't see why it can't just effectively be deleted by changing the page into a redirect to WP:SEASONS. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 07:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Easily done. I'll set about getting the project banner template deleted too. – PeeJay 07:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, I've nominated the associated templates for deletion here and here. I'll nominate the assessment categories in a bit. – PeeJay 07:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And the CfD for the assessment categories is here. – PeeJay 10:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Irish flag
For a player born in Dublin in 1874, which version of the Irish flag should be used in squad lists in a club season article to show his nationality? (Please, no discussion about whether place of birth is a pointer to nationality; for the immediate purpose, can we take that as given?)  Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 05:28, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * In 1874 Dublin was a city in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, so I guess it should be the Union Jack shown on that page. --JonBroxton (talk) 06:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Above is true up to a point. However Ireland's sporting independence was well established at the time. Country had it own national football teams and it's own flag at the time. see St Patrick's Cross. See for example 1884 British Home Championship Djln--Djln (talk) 12:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that - that's a great help.  Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 12:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What article are we talking about? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Philippe Davies
In relation to a dispute at Philippe Davies, User:JonBroxton states "multi-source references removed as they are now superceded by the identical bio link in the external links section". I would prefer inline citations be used to specifically show which claims are being referenced and what the source is. Could anyone add anything? Cheers, Mattythewhite (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Verifiability states "All material in Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source to show that it is not original research, but in practice not everything need actually be attributed. This policy requires that anything challenged or likely to be challenged, including all quotations, be attributed to a reliable source in the form of an inline citation, and that the source directly support the material in question." From that I would say inline citations are always better over external links. GiantSnowman 21:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Having seven or eight references redirecting to the same page just seems like overkill to me. The citations were for things like his height and his place of birth, none of which are "challenged or likely to be challenged", and which can be easily verifed by one click on his external bio link. --JonBroxton (talk) 21:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and just to clarify - it's not really a "dispute", more a case of two editors presenting the same information in different ways. I prefer the single-source way, but I'm not going to kick up a fuss if consensus thinks otherwise. --JonBroxton (talk) 22:00, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Jon. No need to cite everything if one citation lists all facts. Imagine citing every song name on an album back to the album's liner notes. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The same individual citation for every sentence in a short paragraph is probably overkill, once for the paragraph should do. However, if the external link is actually a general reference, it should appear as such in the references section, not (or at least, not only) in the external links section. But the trouble with general references, whether properly placed or left in the external links section as many people do, me included, is that it's far too easy to add unsourced bits and the reader will assume it can be verified by the general ref, whether it can or not. Probably why they invented the No footnotes template. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 22:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Early history of English football clubs
Many articles on English football clubs seem to have very poor early history information (Chesterfield F. C. is a cgood example). I happen to have acquired an offline source (see here for description) which could be used to expand this information for any club that was in the League in the 1999/2000 season. Since I don't know which articles need this most and I'm sure someone reading this does, it would be very helpful if anyone with a specific case needing work could leave a message here. You can see what sort of information I have in mind with this edit to my team. Alzarian16 (talk) 01:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Expatriate footballers in East Germany
User:Zombie433 has been populating this category, but hasn't been doing it correctly - because West Berlin, i.e. Hertha and TeBe Berlin, was not East Germany, and nor is anything after 1990. With this in mind, it seems like a fairly useless category - there weren't many people that moved to East Germany. Zombie, for some reason, removed this comment from his talk page when I added it. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 09:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Also, afair, there were no foreigners allowed in East German football which leads me to believe that Abdul Aziz Moshood has not played for Dresden at all - I also cannot find anything to corroborate his stay with the club in 1989.
 * The category should be deleted - but I dunno how that works. Madcynic (talk) 10:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Correction - there were foreigners, but not in the top flight. Also, there was a third-tier club called SASK Elstal which was composed exclusively of members of the Soviet Army based at Elstal. An exampe for a foreigner who played in the lower tiers is Chérif Souleymane who played for a Neustrelitz club and SC Neubrandenburg, according to the latter club's homepage. However, as none of those players were allowed in the top flight, it is unlikely that many more than my example pass the notability test, hence, the category will be permanently underpopulated. Madcynic (talk) 10:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The vast majority of User:Zombie433's 'X-ian footballers in X' category populations are completely useless, IMHO. Look at all the junk at the bottom of Edgaras Jankauskas's page. --JonBroxton (talk) 17:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There were some foreign players in the final, 1990-91 season but not many Anatoly Demyanenko Pavel Chaloupka Cattivi (talk) 17:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that was East Germany, either by nation or by association - the 1990/91 NOFV Oberliga was under the DFB. ArtVandelay13 (talk) 19:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That was in November, East Germany still existed when the season started in August. Chaloupka, Peter Disztl, Paul Caligiuri and a few others all played when the DDR still existed (Demyanenko was not a very good example) Cattivi (talk) 09:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Moshood didn't play for Dynamo Dresden, Stuttgarter Kickers. The Finnish stats in the infobox that I can check are also wrong Cattivi (talk) 09:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This Zombie433 has a clear habit of making massive listings and categorizations without even reading or checking what he is doing. He already started to add all foreign players that played in Montenegrin clubs in a list of foreign players in Serbia, while I wrote clearly, in the beggining of the article that Montenegrin clubs are excluded... This adding of Hertha´s players at DDR category is another tipical exemple. He doesn´t know the basics, but that is not the worste (not everybody needs to know everything), the worste is that he doesn´t even bother to check, or, completely ignores when corrected. I had already recently posted here an issue regarding his massive categorizations of "Siuxian expatriates in Tunguzya" categories and, everybody agreed, but nothing happend... While not a vandal, his massive and frequent errors are very, very annoying!
 * P.S.:Regarding the category itself, despite being clearly, even if complete, underspopulated, I would find interesting leaving it, but, of course, correctly used. FkpCascais (talk) 09:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have asked a question on his talkpage, I believe he's adding a lot of fiction Cattivi (talk) 09:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wanna bet he´ll just put it unresponded in his archive? :) FkpCascais (talk) 10:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ha, ha, ha,... I won! He archived it. He´s incredible... :) FkpCascais (talk) 10:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That didn't take long. I bet he doesn't know about this source Cattivi (talk) 10:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * After a second question, he made some changes to the Moshood article. (Not enough in my opinion) But at least that's some result :) Cattivi (talk) 11:42, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I am still expecting to see what will be the outcome of that... I honestly think that his main reason for avoiding discussions is because his English is far from being level 4, as he claims in his user page. Anyway, congrats for archiving comunication with him! FkpCascais (talk) 11:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Wigan Rovers
I'm not brilliant with team notability - especially among the lower, regional leagues - but does this history merit an article? I think so, but though I'd check here before creating the article...cheers, GiantSnowman 06:48, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the criterion that we usually set to imply notability is participation in a national cup competition. Since this team played in the FA Cup on several occasions, I would agree with you that it is a notable club. Certainly, if this were to be deleted there would be many more existing articles about teams at a lower level that would have to go as well. I'd say go for it, create the article. Big  Dom  08:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Harry Hampton at Blackpool?
The Blackpool F.C. season 1916–17 article mentions in passing that "Harry Hampton...briefly played for Blackpool this season, scoring eight goals in seven league games" but there is no mention of him playing war football here (or anywhere else for that matter) on his own article; in fact it mentions his participation (and injury) on the Western Front. Can anyone find a source either way? Cheers, GiantSnowman 08:04, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I dare say that User:Dudesleeper would be your best bet here, he's definitely a Blackpool fan (so is User:Tangerines). I suppose there's every possibility that it was a completely different Harry Hampton (seems likely), seeing as there is more than one on the Harry Hampton disambiguation page. Big  Dom  08:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The Aston Villa Player Database page cited as a general reference in the player's article says he played for Villa and guested for Bellis and Morcom, Birmingham, Blackpool, Derby County, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Reading and Stoke during the war. Matthews confirms Birmingham, Derby and Forest, Blackpool season page has two book sources. See no reason why the other clubs shouldn't be right as well. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 11:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * BigDom - the other Harry Hampton (who I was actually searching for when I came across this older player) was Irish and played club football for Dundee & Bradford, before returning to Ireland in 1914. In 1915 he returned to Bradford to live and worked in the Labour Corps during WWI (he had injured himself and was unfit for active duty), so I doubt it's him. Struway - many thanks for that! GiantSnowman 19:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

#### in Fooian association football
Yesterday I went into Category:2010 in association football. I saw that all of the articles titled in the format of my section heading are sorted by "#, ". I noticed that the England and Hong Kong articles, however, were sorted under "E" and "H", respectively; both of those articles are assigned categories via a navigational template. I went into English football seasons and Hong Kong football seasons and then updated the category sort functions. However, the articles are still sorted under "E" and "H". Sometimes those sorts of things can take a few hours to update, but it's been almost a full 24 hours. If someone could fix that and/or explain to me why that is then I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 12:26, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Moving 3 articles (lists) to reflect inclusion criteria
see this page for discussion. it concerns:
 * Arsenal players
 * Aston Villa players
 * Birmingham players
 * Cheers, Sandman888 (talk) 13:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I fixed your botched attempts at notifications. On another note, why only those 3? By my count this project has 13 FLs on players that would be affected by this point. Woody (talk) 13:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

bdfutbol.com - a respectable source?
Hello footies,

following a discussion at an FLC, here, the reliability of bdfutbol.com was brought up. It's an excellent site for Spanish stats, as the official stat-sites are horrible. It only include league games and goal (see here )


 * Pro:
 * all the data can be verified at LFP.es (the Spanish FA), however they only list player stat one season at a time, so to list one player one would have to include either one big general reference to LFP, or links to all the relevant seasons he played.
 * Con:
 * I can't see what makes BDFutbol a WP:RS. The website itself says "All the information in this web (data and photos) has been obtained from 1) data recopilated by myself, 2) internet pages that show it publically and 3) people that has contacted with me to provide me them." which is hardly confidence-inspiring, particularly the third of his data sources. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Cheers, Sandman888 (talk) 11:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I can only say that it has been allways corect whenever I used it. I simply love it! It is usefull for Segunda División, as well. FkpCascais (talk) 11:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I touth it was linked with reputable Spanish magazine Don Balón, but now I see that it isn´t,, and now I understand your questions regarding WP:RS... FkpCascais (talk) 11:27, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, well I'm not doubting that it's useful, interesting etc, but as you say, does it meet our WP:RS guideline? If so, how? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As I touth that it was linked to Don Balon, that makes an extensive coverage of the Spanish football for decades now, I touth that automatically, "their" site, was too, but since they don´t have any connection with them, or to any news agency whatsoever, the site itself looks more like original research. By now, I can only say that I personally find it reliable because I haven´t finded any errors (maybe, yet...). Althougth, we can say that is a website specialised in one area (football), in one country where the sport is particularly popular, where websites with errors wouldn´t probably enjoy such good reputation, like in this case. But... FkpCascais (talk) 12:28, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I suspect the owner(s) of the bdfutbol.com website simply compiles data from LFP.es (which is far from user-friendly). I've never seen data at bdfutbol.com which is not found at LFP.es (although it is much more difficult to find there). Accordingly, I believe it is a valuable reference, if for no other reason than the difficulty of using LFP.es. Is it a reliable source? I doubt it. Jogurney (talk) 13:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Victor the admin states http://bdfutbol.superforos.com/viewtopic.php?t=159:
 * The data is taken -initially- from LFP.es, but there are some important things to point out:
 * LFP.es only contains data from the second division starting on 1992-93. Therefore, all the data I show before that season has been collected from other sources.
 * The data from the second division in LFP.es is minimal. Only the name of the players and its statistics is shown, but there are no player profiles. Moreover, in the player profiles (of the first division), only data regarding first division is shown, not the second. Instead, my site shows everything.
 * In my site the players that have not played any match in the season also appear in the squads, in LFP.es they are missing.
 * - LFP.es contains several errors regarding players information such as place and date of birth, names and surnames. Much of these information is corrected in my site thanks to the messages sent by the users (some of them have came directly from relatives (sons, grandsons...) of the player, so I trust them).
 * - In addition, my site shows many useful information that LFP.es doesn't, such as photos, playing positions, data from the spanish national team, player's relatives, managers, etc.
 * However, ALL the data regarding "statistics" is exactly the same as in LFP. Therefore I think my site is a reliable source.


 * Does that meet the criteria reg. sources? Note that we are only considering the stats, not the more questionable part of birthday errors corrected by grandsons.Sandman888 (talk) 11:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Angelos Basinas
How many league games has Angelos Basinas played for Portsmouth as soccerbase's stats contradict portsmouth fc stats. Gobbleswoggler (talk) 15:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 12 according to SKY Sports TheBigJagielka (talk) 20:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you're asking. Soccerbase say 20 games in all comps, of which 15 in the League, and Portsmouth F.C. say he's played 20 games, which presumably means 20 games in all comps, the same as Soccerbase says. Sky's 12 League games is for this season only, the same as Soccerbase says. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

York Region Shooters
The Canadian team Italia Shooters has recently changed their name to York Shooters. There was already a club called York Region Shooters but it is now defunct. I moved the defunct club's page to York Region Shooters (1998) however there are many links to the York Region Shooters page. Is there a bot that can automatically update links?

i.e. it could find


 * "[[York Region Shooters|" and replace it with "[[York Region Shooters (1998)|"

I would like to move the Italia Shooters to the York Region Shooters page.TheBigJagielka (talk) 20:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you want to use WP:AWB. GiantSnowman 22:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, just done that now. Fascinating tool TheBigJagielka (talk) 01:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

RfC on "Safety" article titles
Hello. I recently opened an RfC on sorting out the titles of the "Safety" articles, both for the position and the scoring play. Since no one has yet responded, I am notifying potentially interested WikiProjects and inviting comment in order to build consensus. Please go here: Talk:Safety_(American_football) to comment. Note that both the position and scoring play are exclusive to American football; however, since there appeared to be extensive comment from association football fans in previous move requests that ended in no consensus, I am notifying this WikiProject as well. –Grondemar 21:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Chester FC article naming
Having not seen the original discussion at this talk page, I opened a move request to shift Chester F.C. (2010) to Chester F.C.. The move passed but was subsequently reverted on the basis of the original discussion here. Whilst I sympathise with the points made previously, I think that:
 * Chester F.C.'s gaining use of the Deva Stadium confirms the serious of the club, which was previously not confirmed
 * The original argument missed that article naming is not a just a case of notability; it is also one of pragmatics.

Anyway, there are comments on the talk page at Talk:Chester F.C. (2010); if people would like to join the discussion (even if it's to tell that I'm wrong and should shut up!) then that'd be great. --Pretty Green (talk) 07:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Redundant categories
Recently, advised me not to substitute Category:Spanish footballers for Category:Footballers from Majorca as he (or she) claimed both had to be there, although they are clearly redundant. I have asked him (or her) to link me to the guideline that states it and to tell me if this is global for all categories or only applied to footballers, but he (or she) does not know this. Could someone help me? Thanks. Paucabot (talk) 07:12, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm a he ;) - oh, and basically I noticed that Paucabot was removing Category:Spanish footballers from articles about Spanish footballers, and inserting regional categories instead. I advised him (or her) not to replace the national category, but said that regional categories as well was fine. GiantSnowman 07:17, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Guidance related to subcategorization is found primarily at Categorization. I can't be certain, of course, but perhaps the suggestion is that Footballers from Majorca is a non-diffusing subcategory? -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm also a he . I have already read the guidelines you linked me (Thanks!) and I am still thinking that Category:Footballers from Majorca is not a non-diffusing category as you can see with the spanish wikipedia category es:Categoría:Futbolistas de España por comunidad autónoma. Furthermore, I don't understand why has deleted the new category if he said it was possible to have both. Paucabot (talk) 07:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don´t see them organised in sub-categories, so only when, and if, that happends, you can start removing the Spanish footballers category.
 * P.S.:If GiantSnowman was a "she", wouldn´t he be a GiantSnowgirl then? :) FkpCascais (talk) 08:05, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They already are organized in subcategories: Category:Basque footballers, Category:Cantabrian footballers, Category:Catalan footballers. Or am I wrong? Paucabot (talk) 10:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, you are not wrong, obviously Basque, Cantabrian and Catalan footballers categories are sub-categories of Spanish footballers, but for that sub-categories to be enough to discart Spanish footballers, all other 14 missing Spanish regions should also have sub-categories, so all Spanish footballers could be sub-categorised, and not only from those 3 regions. It wouldn´t make sence to have the regional subcategories used in only 3 cases, and the "Spanish footballers" category for the rest. I´m not sure if this was clear, but you can also have this other perspective, exemple, if you use the category, Category:People from Novi Sad, since Novi Sad is the city capital of Serbian province of Vojvodina, you could discart the category Category:People from Vojvodina, but that doesn´t necessarily happend, and is even often to see both used. For your case, since the regions of Spain even usually participate in non-FIFA football tournaments, it can be usefull to have some regions footballers categories to have an idea of which players could be selected to those non-FIFA teams (Catalonia, Basque Country, etc.). But, it is usefull to have the Category:Spanish footballers present anyway since they are, after all, Spanish. Resumingly, I think that the sub-categorisation is only usefull in cases where the sub-categorisation is complete, meaning, in Spanish case, that all 17 Spanish regions would have their sub-categories. FkpCascais (talk) 02:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I still don't get it clear. Is it your point of view or is this a guideline of this project? If it's the second one, where is it explained? Paucabot (talk) 20:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

"Released from contract"
Yep, it's that time of year again. It has been reported by the BBC that Bradford City have released (note tense) seven players. City themselves have confirmed that the players will go "when their contracts expire". To me this is a definite indication that these players no longer play for Bradford. So, the question is, do we have to wait until 30th June, or can we start related editing now? GiantSnowman 18:51, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup interesting time of yearmy view, for what it's worth, is that if the club announce it then the players are 'out' and editing could begin. Trouble happens when folk use some tabloid or blog for their info.--Egghead06 (talk) 05:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a difference in the standard of info that should be expected in an encyclopaedia than in a pub conversation. At the Dog and Duck, it is fine to say that Lee Trundle has been released: to all intents and purposes, his connection with Bristol City is now over.  But the club remains financially committed to him, and he to the club legally, until the end of the contract.  News media will use informal, imprecise language (contrast the club's and the BBC's comments quoted above in relation to Bradford's soon-to-be-former players; note the BBC's inconsistency between the headline and the lead para headline here.  We seemed to reach a consensus last year on player articles of phrasing like "currently at Livmanchelsenal FC, but due to leave upon the expiry of his contract in June 2010", and we have had players whose departure is pending indicated by a dagger or similar, with suitable footnote, on club squad lists. It is probably not worth running around reverting every premature edit claiming end of a contract, but there is no real excuse for declaring something to have happened before it does.  Kevin McE (talk) 07:22, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Always assuming, of course, that we know when a contract ends! Do all contracts run until the end of June or do some run until the end of a season? Very often no date is given for a contract end--Egghead06 (talk) 07:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactly. Articles should say exactly what we do know, and no more, when it comes to BLPs. It's always worth remembering that we're discussing the specific details of someone's livelihood, and that Wikipedia is a very high-profile site for most player biographies (I'd be unsurprised if it were the first Google result for most active players these days). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:32, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But that cuts both ways. Media such as the BBC show themselves to be imprecise and inconsistent, and so not, in this context, reliable for the finer detail of contract dates.  So maybe not specify "June", but equally don't say in May that he is no longer employed by a club when standard contract lasts until the end of June and we do not know that the specific contract is any different or that the contract has been cancelled rather than simply allowed to dwindle out.  Kevin McE (talk) 10:15, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's certainly true that the sources themselves may not be perfect, but by reporting exactly what they say we're at least leaving the potential for a false interpretation to the reader rather than making it ourselves. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * End of June citations available c 2/3 way through this; here; and 4th paragraph of this. Kevin McE (talk) 22:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Tom Heaton
Tom Heaton has returned to Manchester United F.C. I am not sure if he is in the first team or reserves. either way can i still add him to the Manchester united squad template. Gobbleswoggler (talk) 09:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all, how do you know that he has returned to Manchester United? Loan contracts run until 30 June, so isn't he still technically on loan? Secondly, the Manchester United website lists him only as a reserve player, so I would not add him to the squad template. – PeeJay 13:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PeeJay, I'm not sure that loan contracts are until the end of June. For example, Ryan Taylor played for Rotherham in the play-offs yesterday despite having been on loan at Exeter. However, I would agree with you that as a reserve player, Heaton should not be included in the squad template. Big  Dom  16:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There's no fixed period. Unless a source can be found indicating that the loan is definitely over, we shouldn't assume it. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Conversely, unless a source states that the loan extends beyond the end of the borrowing club's season, we shouldn't assume it. where does the burden of proof fall? Kevin McE (talk) 18:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, we're damned both ways basically. I'm still of the opinion that when one is updating the current status of a given player one should always be working from a source which says whatever one is adding. For most of our current notable players, this really shouldn't that difficult because their notability implicitly suggests that reliable sources are keeping track of them. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:24, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Payrool
This may be off topic with Wikipedia, but how much do footballers in Europe get paid a year and do you know any clubs that have recieved concerns about it? – Michael (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Surely that is what google is for? Anyhoo, this survey from 2006 showed an average in the English Premier League of £676,000 a year and that will have only gone up. Cristiano Ronaldo apparently gets £11.3 million, but professionals in the English fifth division (Football Conference) probably earn more in the range of £20,000 a year, if that. Not quite sure what you mean by 'received concerns' is that an accountancy term? --Pretty Green (talk) 16:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure that there is some official definition of a sensible wages/turnover ratio. I've seen a website which keeps track of it from Scottish clubs at least. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Bernard Williams
This fellow looks interesting - an Irish player who spent 15 years in France, winning two league titles and a Cup. Can anyone dig out any more info on him? Cheers, GiantSnowman 20:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Victor Gibson
Another Brit active in France, does anyone have his Scottish Football League stats for Morton and Falkirk? Thanks, GiantSnowman 20:45, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Play-off appearances
I'm of the understanding that play-off appearances do not count towards league appearances and as such should not be included in the infobox stats. Could this be backed up, as User:SBFCEdit disagrees with regards to Steve Morison's stats? Cheers, Mattythewhite (talk) 21:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You are correct. --JonBroxton (talk) 21:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See the infobox documentation, which says "note: Playoff matches are not counted as league matches by most statistical sources (e.g. Soccerbase and the Sky Sports (Rothmans) Football Yearbook, so they should not be included in this infobox". cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Walter Puddefoot
Is this player any relation to Syd and Len? Dates are similar (1920s) as is the unusual name...GiantSnowman 01:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

International Years again
What is the general feeling of consensus for the recent Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football/Archive_41 discussion? I only ask because a couple of users are still adding end-dates to players, which I wouldn't mind so much for players that have not been recently selected, but they seem happy to add them to players that are actually in current World Cup squads...inconsistantly so, as Rio Ferdinand and [Ashley Cole]] seem exempt, despite thier last actual caps being in the same game as Tom Huddlestone. While players who have not been included for "ages" may be open to interpretation disagreements, surely someone in a "current squad" is somewhat less so?-- Club Oranje T 06:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My opinion is that, unless the player has specifically come out and said they are no longer available for international selection, or they have retired from football altogether, their international years should be open ended, with the year of their first cap, following by an ndash. --JonBroxton (talk) 06:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactly. That's the safest option, and we should always err on the side of caution when it comes to BLPs. The argument again this is basically an "appeal to accuracy" which requires the reader to trust the editor. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Completely agree. Take the case of Ben Sigmund, who won his first cap in 2000, but didn't win his second for another seven years - and he's now in the NZ World Cup squad! GiantSnowman 18:04, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Isn't that why we edit this encyclopedia on a Wiki platform and not carve in stone, so we can edit as things change? So between 2000 and 2007, there was absolutely nothing factually incorrect in saying "Sigmund had a single international appearance in 2000." Mosmof (talk) 00:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Also agree. I do have another question: Does the first year correspond to the first call, or first cap, in case that are different? FkpCascais (talk) 18:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Date of first cap, always. GiantSnowman 18:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have to disagree re: end date. At least for the majority of English and Brazilian player articles I've come across, the end dates were/are set whether their absence from international matches were voluntary. I don't see a compelling reason to change this practice, even if it's not set as policy. Vast majority of players (a) end their international careers before their club careers and (b) do so involuntarily. And the ones who do announce international retirements end up coming back anyway. It seems safer, more accurate and WP:Ver to use a piece of data that is inarguable, the most recent cap date.
 * I'd avoid using squads and callups as guides, since it's possible for a player to be called into camp, but still end up playing for another national team. All national team stats are for participation, not consideration. :And yes, some long-absent players are included in squads. But again, the infobox dates are for caps (since the years are right next to the number of caps and all), not considerations, which is open to interpretation.
 * I do agree with the call for consistency, though, and I don't think it's unreasonable or confusing to set the end date if a player hasn't appeared for his country for a full calendar year or longer (so anyone whose last appearance was in 2008 or earlier), regardless of circumstances. Mosmof (talk) 19:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But if you put an end date, to the vast majority of readers, it will signify that his international career has ended entirely, and that he will never play for his country again. As I said before, unless the player has specifically come out and said they are no longer available for international selection, or they have retired from football altogether, this is simply factually incorrect. --JonBroxton (talk) 20:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're basing your definition of "incorrect" on how you guess the majority of readers will interpret a data. The problem is, you're only guessing, and it's not our problem if readers read into things that aren't there. I can just as easily argue that the majority of readers will understand it as "Player x earned n number of caps between 199x and 200y", which is perfectly correct. I could be wrong, but I'm not any more wrong than you are. Another issue is that an international career is never officially over - conceivably, Italy can call up Paolo Maldini as an injury replacement for its World Cup squad.
 * I wouldn't be guessing at all. Let's say that Player X first plays for Country X in 2004. Unless he says otherwise, or he retires entirely from football, he is theoratically eligible to play for his country again, at any time. Putting an end date is WP:OR, because we have no citable evidence that his international career has ended. So his international box should read "2004-", because we have no idea when his international career will end. The only way we will know for certain is when he declares himself ineligible, or retires from the game. As far as Paolo Maldini is concerned; under normal circumstances, yes, absolutely he could be called up as an injury replacement for its World Cup squad. This is exactly why international years should be left open-ended. The same goes for any active player who has not withdrawn from international play. The only difference with Maldini is that he *has* formally announced that he has retired from international football, and there are citable sourced which confirm this. If he goes back on this announcement, fair enough, we change it to reflect this. But for anyone who has NOT made an announcement, we need to leave it open ended. --JonBroxton (talk) 02:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My point about "guessing" was about your assumption about how people see the infobox. Also, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of what has happened, not what might or might not happen in the future, so I see the infobox as a record of the past, i.e. how many caps a player earned, and when those caps were earned. To assume a player's international career isn't over is WP:CRYSTAL because it's an assumption of a future event that's not guaranteed (as opposed to club affiliation, which is active until a contract is terminated).
 * You're twisting the definition of WP:CRYSTAL. We're not saying what might or might not happen in the future. We're saying that this person HAS played for Country X since Year X, and he is still eligible to do so, unless we have a source that confirms otherwise. To assume a player's international career IS over is WP:CRYSTAL unless we have citable evidence confirming it. --JonBroxton (talk) 03:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * To me, it does the reader great disservice to not provide the years for international caps earned for, say, Sylvinho or Robbie Fowler or Nick Barmby. Mosmof (talk) 03:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Maldini is probably a bad example give he has not played football in almost a year.Hack (talk) 03:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You misunderstood my point. Maldini is an example of a player who is still eligible for a call-up, since anyone who's registered with an FA is eligible. International career never officially ends. Paul Gascoigne is eligible for a call-up as well - and as far as I know, he never announced his international retirement. Mosmof (talk) 03:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: Data is plural. It's not "a data" as you wrote, it's "a datum". Please see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data . Feel free to discuss the actual issue again now. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Off-topic as it is, Bryson has said that this is a lost cause; while "a data" is pretty odd, and really should still be "datum" (or the contemporary "a point of data"), nobody would bat an eyelid at "the data says otherwise" rather than "the data say otherwise" these days. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Plus, plenty of players have gone back on international retirements that are purely unofficial. And is Nick Barmby's international career any more over than Paul Scholes', simply because he hasn't bothered to say, "Hey, I'm done with England". Instead of relying on fickle whims of professional footballers, I'd rather rely on verifiable facts - dates of the first and most recent caps. And removing the end date on Jamie Carragher's international cap years, as some editors are doing, is crystal balling, since they're are basically saying "He will earn another cap at some future date". Mosmof (talk) 00:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm going to have to agree to Jon with this one. Unless they officially retire (from all football or just their international career), leave the year open ended. Digirami (talk) 06:51, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Mosmof, this is certainly a matter of opinion rather than one with a definite right answer, but at this point it's pretty obvious that we've got consensus to leave these open-ended unless a player has explicitly retired. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I can live with that. I just hope everyone understands and is prepared for the amount of work required to go through articles of active footballers with stalled international careers to enforce this consensus. It's easy to talk about high profile players like Jamie Carragher, but the footballing world is littered with middling players who stop playing internationally involuntarily. I'm all for consistency, and from experience, I've found it to be easier to rely on most recent cap date than to find out whether a player has announced retirement, and whether or not he's changed his mind since then, as footballers often do. It's not like a player retiring from club play, which requires termination of contract. I think there is a danger in relying on unofficial, non-binding and often ignored announcements, but I realize I'm in the minority.
 * Finally, not to be the pedantic asshole, and I promise I won't bring this up again, but please repeat after me: there is no such thing as an "official" retirement from international play. Those announcements are unofficial requests to not to be called up. They don't prevent players from being included in squads and they're easily and very often reneged without any paperwork. Mosmof (talk) 01:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I would say that the end year should represent the last cap earned. I don't completely understand the idea that it suggests the player's international career is over, as giving the end year does not actually explicitly state they have retired/are unavailable for selection etc. Using Barmby as an example, surely it is more informative for the reader to see when he last earned a cap than for it to be open ended and so insinuate he is still a member of the squad? Mattythewhite (talk) 01:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with Matty on this. Knepflerle (talk) 10:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * But the problem is that then the club and country fields in the infobox would have different semantics. The club field doesn't cover appearances, it covers employment. We try to approximate this with the country field by setting a "start date" of when the player has committed to playing for the country (first cap), and after that any player who is still under consideration for selection is considered "employed". Yes, this leads to some strangeness where a player remains active in football long after he's dropped out of the thoughts of the national coach, but the alternative means a fundamental change in the semantics of the field from "can play for" to "has played for". Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:39, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see that as a problem because of the differences in way players are hired by clubs and country. It might help you understand better if you think of playing for a club as a full-time 9-to-5 job and national team as seasonal or freelance work. With the former, terms of employment are based largely on time and you're expected to show up everyday unless you're told otherwise, and there's a formal process for terminating employment. WIth the latter, you show up only when there are specific projects, and if the supervisor decided he doesn't like you, he just doesn't call you. Why is this distinction important? Well, when you're writing your C.V., say you haven't done any freelance work for Acme Widgets since the Germany project in 2006. It would be awfully dishonest and uninformative to write your time with Acme Widgets as "2001-present", simply because you're "eligible" and you haven't told Acme not to call you.
 * And have you noticed that of the three figures in the national team line, we all agree that the start date and the cap count are about when a player "has played for" his country, but you want the end year to be when a player "can possibly play for and hasn't explicitly said he doesn't want to"? Why do so many editors think this inconsistency is preferable to a simple "has played 34 times between 2001 and 2006"? Mosmof (talk) 11:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Because as we've discussed before, this gets messy and misleading if, say, a player is regularly called into the squad as a substitute but doesn't play in a game. And it rather demands that if a player doesn't get called up to a squad his years have to immediately be set to his last played game. We keep repeating these same arguments and nothing is changing. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Why would you remove the end year simply because a player's in a squad or on the bench? We're talking about participation, not the potential to participate. Again, I'll concede to the consensus, but I don't get the desire to complicate things. Mosmof (talk) 13:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This has become a bit messy. I found one example: Vitali Kutuzov – here, the player in question has "2002–present" for national team years. And another question: Is it wrong that this player has the national flag next to his national team? I found a couple of Belarusian players with the flag in the infobox. Jared Preston (talk) 11:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What I have been doing is leaving the last year open for international players still playing (unless they stated they wan´t play internationally any more), and when the player retires, I put the year of his last cap, as the closing year of his NT career. FkpCascais (talk) 11:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding the flags, I have been removing them. They shouldn´t be used in infoboxes (I even found some flags in club section, as well). FkpCascais (talk) 11:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, it seems that a lot of players linked to the Belarus national football team have flags in their infoboxes, if you want to take a look. Jared Preston (talk) 11:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Presumably this is just an editor education issue. If someone has time it would be best to nuke the lot of them and notify whoever was responsible of the flag guidelines. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

If we give the closing date for the caps, then we have given one extra piece of unambiguous, unchanging and verifiable information - the year of the last cap.

If on the other hand we leave it open-ended, we omit this information and are hoping that the reader guesses our "convention" re international retirement - they have no way of finding out what our convention is from the article, it is important remember.

The only reason against the end date is a potential for misunderstanding, but I'm not convinced it will arise, as anyone looking at another article will swiftly realise that most current international footballers have cap date 200x-2010, as you'd expect.

The infobox should be kept for completely unambiguous information, because there is no room for explanation. If we want to inform a reader that a player has retired internationally, we should state so in the text, not imply it in the infobox (again assuming a reader guesses our convention correctly).

I would also contend that the end-date format is easier to maintain; most biographies' "number of caps" are updated at the time of match, and thus the end date will get its (maximally once a year) update. If a player has caps but then a long career afterwards, drifting to ever smaller clubs or with no official declaration of retirement, then it is far less likely that the infobox will get updated to indicate that the player is retired; with the end-date convention the infobox will be, and remain, up-to-date even in this eventuality. Knepflerle (talk) 13:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * But it isn't "unambiguous", because being capped (i.e. getting some time on the pitch during an international match) is certainly not the only indicator we have of appearance with the national team. Players on the bench are still with the national team, even if they aren't capped in a give game. The same applies to players who are suspended. For us to set end dates means that we need to agree what "end" means - date of last cap is misleading in too many cases for it to be a good choice. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, a player on the bench is with the national team, but not playing with the national team. Cap number is updated only when the player sets foot on the field. So why complicate matters by using a different criterion for the end year? Mosmof (talk) 13:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Again, you must remember that readers have no idea what "convention" we use. The reader sees a set of years next to a number of caps; I guess 99% will expect that the years correspond to when they got the caps, not when they last sat on the bench or team bus.  I certainly would never have guessed that the cap number and dates are worked out quasi-independently using different criteria.
 * In the infobox we don't have room to explain further, so we have to pick the simplest, most obvious option - use dates which directly correspond to the information next to them. Not hard, not complicated, not misleading. Knepflerle (talk) 13:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And you know what is complicated? Going through articles of guys like Cicinho and Sylvinho and Nick Barmby and Robbie Fowler and Emerson AND Emerson and Shinji Ono and Clint Mathis and Pierre Womé and Claudio López and hundreds of more obscure footballers and making sure the end year isn't entered until they announce retirement, and then going back and re-entering the end year when they do fade into obscurity and retire from club play. Changing our practice and removing end years because a mythical Wikipedia reader might be confused (and is it really a problem if people mistakenly believe Kieron Dyer's international career is over?) in a move away from consistency and simplicity seems misguided. Mosmof (talk) 14:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Why would they not assume the equally likely case that an end date means "left or retired", like it does in the club section? Media reports still frequently refer to such-and-such a player as being a "Q-land international" even if he hasn't had a cap for a while. If this were really such an obviously correct choice then we wouldn't repeatedly argue about it, and there wouldn't repeatedly be shown to be a good level of support for the status quo. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What "status quo"? I just listed a bunch of lower tier international articles where the accepted practice is to put an end year on international careers whether the players like it or not. It's only in higher profile footballer articles where editors impose the "we mustn't mention the year of the most recent cap until he announces his unofficial retirement from the international game, which he'll more likely than not come out from" convention. These articles are very much in the minority. Mosmof (talk) 00:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well we could do exactly the same for club data. In that case, to denote retired players we could do something revolutionary and use the word "retired" in the infobox, instead of having our readers playing the WP:FOOTY-convention-mind-reading guessing-game.
 * The media reports argument is a red herring - it's no excuse whatsoever for having a date next to a piece of information which doesn't correspond to that information. We report when they played and leave it at that; leave it to sourced article text to make uncertain judgments on whether they'll play again.
 * Just for once, put yourself in the shoes of the reader, and stop thinking about this in terms of editing convenience and editor discussions. Pick the convention that any reasonable reader would think we're using (date next to caps corresponds to date of caps - how obvious is that?), instead of this bizarre unpredictable mish-mash.  Knepflerle (talk) 23:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Nelson Stiffle
I have just created Nelson Stiffle and was wondering if there was a definitive source to the claim he was the first Indian-born Football League player. Hack (talk) 06:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a vague feeling I created an article for a Gillingham player who was born in India and pre-dated him, but I might be imagining that. I'll check later...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Arthur Mills? Hack (talk) 08:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That'll be him :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Presume they must mean born in what is now India... Reg Tricker was born in Karachi in 1904, which pre-dates Mr Mills. If it helps, this Ashton United page gives a bit more info about Mr Stiffle's early career, though I think their stats are for all competitions, not just league. Still has nothing more than "India" for place of birth. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, they mean what was then India. Karachi is now in Pakistan. India was split into India, West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the late 1940's (ish)-- Club Oranje T 11:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that's actually the point Stru was making. Mills and Tricker were born in what was then India, but Stiffle was (maybe) the first FL player born in what is now India..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh!. I see now. Sorry.-- Club Oranje T 20:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Judging by the comments it would seem that we think we know the first FL player from what was India as well as the first from what is now India. Hack (talk) 10:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is allfootballers.com still down? Hack (talk) 09:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It is, unfortunately. It's put paid to a few of the Nelson F.C. player articles I was creating, but now I can't. :( Big  Dom  16:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Stevenage F.C.
Stevenage Borough F.C. announced yesterday that they are dropping the "Borough" from their name. The club's website clearly states that the club won't officially change its name until 1 June, which is obviously after the close of the current 2009–10 season. From the club's release: "Stevenage chairman Phil Wallace has announced that the club will start its new life in the Football League as Stevenage Football Club, dropping the word ‘Borough’ from its name from 1st June... The change of name has been approved by the FA and the Football League. Stevenage Football Club will take its place in the Football League at the AGM in early June 2010." As a result, the 2009–10 article shouldn't have been moved from 2009–10 Stevenage Borough F.C. season (to 2009–10 Stevenage F.C. season). However, all future seasons should obviously have the new format. Could an admin move it back? JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 13:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Moved, although I didn't need my admin special powers to do so..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been editing for a few years, but I'm always wary of moving an article to a location that's already a redirect. I was told long ago that you can lose an article's edit history if you do it incorrectly, so I've always tried to avoid it. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * On the same topic, this change of name is affecting many of the players' articles. For example, on the article for Mark Robertsm all mentions of "Stevenage Borough" have been replaced with "Stevenage" so that it now appears he won the Conference with "Stevenage", which is clearly not true in my opinion. The player's statistics table also appears to be in denial that he represented "Stevenage Borough" for the last two seasons. What do others think is the best way to deal with this? Big  Dom  19:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Copa Libertadores
I have requested that the page be introduced into peer reviewing. This page is entering an interesting phase and I believe it has real potential to become a feauture article.Jamen Somasu (talk) 12:35, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I notice that on the PR page you've written "It would look great on the WIKIFootball project if we had a feautured page". Presumably you're aware that the project already has over 50 Featured Articles......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I highly support the idea of promoting Copa Libertadores into a Feature article. In fact, I think we should also play focus and try to promote most of the important competitions in our project to feature article status, e.g. UEFA Champions League, UEFA European Football Championship, La Lega or Serie A. I think we have pay too much attention on clubs and players, but significantly insufficient on tournaments.
 * Returning to Copa Libertadores, although I support we should pay more effort on it to promote it to feature status, the current state of the article is far from fulfilling the FAC requirements. Obviously it significantly lacks citations. It also contain lots of NPOV sentences and phrases. I suppose these are the most basic stuffs that a feature article should acquire. Anyway, it's a good start. Salt (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I cited every "NPOV" phrase and...well, simply I cited everything AND I added a bibliography section. What else could it possibly need to become a FA? Jamen Somasu (talk) 22:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I see you've started a peer review, which is a good start. After the most obvious problems have been fixed I'd take it to WP:GA first - they'll give you plenty of in-depth feedback, but the criteria aren't as stringent as for WP:FA. Knepflerle (talk) 23:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I will do that. If this thing gets aproved to become a good article I will bump it up to FA and see the smalls things needed to become one. Thanks for the insight! Jamen Somasu (talk) 23:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

David May
I don't want the one that played for Manchester United, but there was another who played during the 80s, I think he might of played for Chelsea and Sheffield Wednesday, but it's very hard to find any material. Don't know if anyone know who I am talking about? Govvy (talk) 18:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * According to The PFA Premier & Football League Players' Records 1946-2005, there's only one David May. The nearest I can find is a Larry May who played 31 games for Wednesday in the 1980s? Mattythewhite (talk) 18:13, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Larry May played for Leicester, Barnsley, Wednesday and Brighton between 1976 and 1989. There's also a Warren May who played 90 League games for Southend in the mid-80s...GiantSnowman 21:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Categories based on religion for football players?
What is the general opinion here about adding catgories based on religion to football player's articles? The concrete example here is Franck Ribéry where editors keep adding the. I've removed them repeatedly because Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality says: Categories should not be based on religion unless the belief has a specific relation to the topic. I don't think that Ribéry's belief has any specific relation for his article (he is, after all, notable for playing football). Any comments? --Jaellee (talk) 20:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I´m not sure if such a simplicist category should even exist. That category could possibly contain tousands, not to say, millions of articles... FkpCascais (talk) 20:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I support deleting all of these religion-based categories from footballer biographies. I don't think many footballers are notable as adherents of a particular religion (even ones that converted to a particular religion during their football career like Ribéry). If a footballer was also a leading practitioner of a religion or wrote books on the subject perhaps the category would fit better. Jogurney (talk) 21:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I supported adding the category to Ribery because his conversion is clearly cited and frequently mentioned by announcers when he plays matches. I would hope that everyone agrees that the category English Christians would belong on an article like Linvoy Primus. As for Ribery I believe his conversion is of enough significance to include it. 97.116.18.242 (talk) 22:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The case of Mr. Primus is completely different. He is notable for something directly related to his religion. M. Ribéry on the other hand is notable only for playing football, which is in no way connected to his religion. His convertion is cited frequently only because he is a high profile player. If he had instead decided to only wear pink socks for the rest of his life, it would have been mentioned almost as often, but that does not mean he sould be categorised under People who wear pink socks. Sir Sputnik (talk) 23:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sir Sputnik, your analogy is poor and irrelevant. The choice of someone's dress is insignificant in comparison to their religion. There would never be a category former but the latter can be an important classification. As for the significance of faith in Ribery's case, it is of enough importance to mention I believe. It is attributed to his transformation from troubled youth to great player. His marriage and family is also strongly tied to his conversion. 97.116.18.242 (talk) 02:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that is an argument for including information about his religion and conversion in the biography, not for use of the category. When you look in the category Muslim people, do you really expect to find someone notable as a football player, or instead people notable as leaders, theologians or responsible somehow for advancing the religion? Jogurney (talk) 03:10, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that in the cases mentioned it is notable enough for a brief mention in the article text itself, but there's no need for an entire categorisation system to be set up because of these occasional special cases. In the vast majority of cases the information would be unverifiable and/or a trivial intersection - see WP:OC, and particularly this CfD discussion. Knepflerle (talk) 10:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ribery's being Muslim is mentioned for the same reason that the good doctor's other profession is frequently mentioned - because journalists and commentators are lazy. It is not an important enough aspect of Ribery's biography that he belongs in the category when the lack of sources in this domain means that the vast, vast majority of footballers are not in a religion category regardless of the strengths of their convictions. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't believe you have read the information I have cited above. Ribery's faith is directly credited as the reason Ribery has become as good as he is. WP:BLPCAT states: "Categories regarding religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question; and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to his notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources." His faith is most definitely relevant and notable to his public life and should therefore be included. It is not a petty mention as you suggest. 97.116.18.242 (talk) 16:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But that's specific to Ribery. I'd say he's the exception that proves the rule - more often than not, religion is irrelevant to a player's notability. Most professional footballers are categorized by nationality, position, club affiliation, age, etc, but I have yet to see religion as a universally used category in discussing footballers. Mosmof (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * His notable activities are those of a professional footballer, not an adherent of a religion. I don't see any evidence that his religious faith is relevant to his notability as a footballer. Jogurney (talk) 17:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Even the source cited above states that "On the subject of Islam, Ribéry is definitely not talkative. ... I prefer to keep my reasons to myself." For me, this means that he obviously avoids to be notable on account of his beliefs. --Jaellee (talk) 18:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't want to seem like I'm parsing words here, but the spirit of that section is that if a person is exceptional in some way because of the expressed choice then it's worth noting. I would suggest that Franck Ribery is not entirely alone in being both a Frenchman and a Muslim, even in a footballing context. As Mosmof says, this is indeed the exception that proves the rule, as a seeming edge case which in fact enforces the purpose of the guideline. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above assessment. I am not advocating the inclusion in trivial instances or as an universal descriptor. I believe in exceptional cases such as Primus, Ribery and perhaps Anelkas that a religious category is appropriate. This view is supported at WP:OC with the quote "Likewise, people should only be categorized by ethnicity or religion if this has significant bearing on their career." and at WP:BLPCAT "ategories regarding religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question; and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to his notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources.". In regards to Jaellee's comment a person does not need to be extremely open with their faith for it to be relevant to their notability. As to Jogurney, Ribery's faith is relevant to his faith because as I have shown above it is attributed by reliable sources to his transformation from a troubled youth player to international star. 97.116.18.242 (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * But what's the point of an entire categorisation system for the tiny handful of notable exceptions? It would make sense if we had this information and it was notable for many players, but it isn't.
 * The link I gave earlier has the following advice:
 * "Dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as Category:LGBT writers or Category:African American musicians, should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created"
 * If decent head articles get written on this subject then maybe we can think about setting up a general category system, but until then it's premature. Knepflerle (talk) 08:05, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Ivan Ergic
Hi everyone. I started having a slow edit-war going on that article. The problem is that Ergic played for many years as "Australian" while with FC Bassel, but since then, he has played for the Serbian national team. I moved the lead sentence from "I.E. a Serbian-Australian footballer" to "I.E. a Serbian inernational footballer". Despite having double nationality (Serbian/Australian), he can´t play anymore for Australia, thus footbalistically being "Serbian", but another editopr disagrees with me, reading the previos version, and the Auatralian footballer categories... As additional information, he is also a Yugoslavia born, only having lived fpor some period in Australia. We have some reverse exemples of players that have been born in Yugoslavia and played for Australia, where I defend to say that they are Australian footballers, of course. FkpCascais (talk) 22:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The category system and the inclusion criteria for the categories aren't up to the actual complexity of citizenship and nationality in anything other than trivial cases. Nothing new there - I'm not sure there's much to be done here, as this is a widespread problem nobody feels like fixing.  Knepflerle (talk) 23:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To complicate matters he was born in what is now Croatia. For the purposes of WP:Football he is Serbian by virtue of playing for the national team. I say leave the Australian categories since he is an Australian citizen and spent a fair bit of his football development in Australia. Hack (talk) 01:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * OK. Thanx a lot. :) FkpCascais (talk) 08:39, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

North Korean "Expatriates"
I was just reviewing Category:North Korean expatriate footballers, only to find that almost half of the players listed in that category apear to have never lived or played outside of the DPRK. Does anyone know anything about this? I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything before I remove the category from the articles in question. Thanks. Sir Sputnik (talk) 00:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * From what I see, it looks that User:Junichi, that has made most of the articles, has been including the category from the beggining, probably because he doesn´t really know what it means... FkpCascais (talk) 08:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Africa Cup of Natons 2013
Do hosts of the 2012 edition Gabon and Equatorial Guinea automatically qualify for 2013? TheBigJagielka (talk) 12:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

South Africa Football NFL (1959-1977)
I've created League and Cup (Castle Cup) new pages for the PSL's predecessors:

Also to editing teams: And small change:
 * National Football League (South Africa) and one season 1977:
 * 1977
 * Castle Cup football
 * Rangers Johannesburg
 * Durban United F.C.
 * Hellenic FC
 * Highlands Park FC ‎
 * Lusitano F.C.
 * Durban City F.C.

Any improvements much appreciated. RAMR2 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC).

Released footballers
Does anyone know a website where it tell me players who have just being released? Cheers, Gobbleswoggler (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please be a bit more specific. Released from clubs? Better question...from where? Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Any clubs, Gobbleswoggler (talk) 16:38, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I seriously doubt it...do you have any idea how many clubs can a single city have, never mind a country? Let's not even get into the world...Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, clubs in england. Gobbleswoggler (talk) 16:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What division?Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Any league in the football league. Gobbleswoggler (talk) 16:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of divisions in England...Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:53, 20 May 2010(UTC)
 * Players who have been released from the premier league down to league 2.Gobbleswoggler (talk) 16:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah! That is more like it...in that case, I haven't the slightest idea! BUT...the next person that reads through this might know what you are looking for. Have a great day! :) Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * BBC Sport is good at giving reports of players being released. Mattythewhite (talk) 17:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You might like to look at PFA transfer list for some more info.--Egghead06 (talk) 17:54, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Trial of new parameter in fb template - tournament qualified
As what the Ukarinian Premier League article happened, I'm now doing a trial of adding a new parameter of tournament qualified for the fb template, which shows at Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga until the season finished. If the trial is successful, then we could implement into other leagues since next season. The usage of the parameter is tournamentqualified= and only apply on they are sure to qualify for the tournament, but not sure to qualify for the stage. Raymond "Giggs" Ko 02:37, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Since this is a somehow related discussion, please take also a short glimpse at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Season article task force. --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 09:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * More band-aids to fix a WP:FUTURE issue. Utterly Hopeless. How about writing a complete paragraph in the annotation section to confuse readers even more? And while you're at it, add (BS) which is self-explanatory. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 16:39, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Even worse than writing essays about European qualification in the annotation section, as seen in various Premier League articles: Using regular and pointless paragraphs.--Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 17:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It seems that that pointless is not there now. But it was clear when you agreed to the prose two seasons ago when then this issue came up. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 18:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Seriously, and once again, if you don't like the format of the league season articles, go ahead, set up a proposal, and present it to the masses when finished. Since the Ukrainian national football team does not compete at the World Cup, there should be plenty of time available once your domestic season is over.

The proposal is quite clear - Display information that is verifiable and not in conflict with WP:FUTUREBrudder Andrusha (talk) 18:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * On topic - While the new abbreviation surely adds some clarity, I do not think that the Q or TQ parameters should be continued to be used. There are just too much unnecessary reverts related to them, because casual readers do not understand the actual meaning at first sight and thus add them on behalf of their own understanding, often resulting in erroneous edits. Just leave them out completely and only add C for the champions, R for the relegated teams and, if necessary, O and A, once the respective facts become true. And regarding the qual/rel column - how about adding an automatic footnote which states something in the terms of "these spots are available, teams are qualified once season is over" and leaving the actual facts to the respective Champions League, Europa League or similar articles? --Soccer-holicI hear voices in my head... 17:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Obviously that fool of a goon who invaded the Ukrainian Premier Season after the 23rd Round continues to think that his band-aid approach of annotation is a solution - even after the season has completed. Dumb is even dumber who continues his folly of (Q) and (TQ) after the season is over that one has to wonder what is his real mission here is. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 18:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Review
As the season of the four leagues was over, I'd like to invite all of you to review for the design. Raymond "Giggs" Ko 13:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

UEFA.com conversions
Hi there teammates,

regarding this issue which i have brought up a few times, i would like to get some help (then, of course, all the good-faith users could drink from the subsequent pouring fountain :)), the following:

User:Thumperward unfortunately told me that all the UEFA.com links would only be corrected manually. Well, myself and others have been on to that, but i still have some doubts:


 * I know that for instance this (http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/news/kind=1/newsid=730715.html) should now read (http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/newsid=730715.html), the same procedure being used for the "uefacup" links (now "uefaeuropaleague"), case solved.


 * However, what is the replacement for the links that read "magazine" and "footballeurope"? Those are important links, especially the latter, which contains several articles on weekend action across the European leagues, plus off-season moves.


 * Regarding the links that read "intertotocup", that should be even more of a conundrum, as this competition has disappeared.

Attentively, i pass the ball - --Vasco Amaral (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * If all else fails then changing the domain to en.archive.uefa.com works for old articles including footballeurope and intertoto e.g http://www.uefa.com/competitions/IntertotoCup/history/Season=1998/intro.html to http://en.archive.uefa.com/competitions/IntertotoCup/history/Season=1998/intro.html Camw (talk) 09:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Clean Sheets Vs Goals
I'm no expert, but why aren't goalkeeping stats given for goalkeepers and defenders? Clean sheets are far more important to a keeper than 'goals'. Likewise assists, tackles and pass completion percentages matter more for midfielders (and defenders). Although I accept that this data might be harder to come by. Clean sheets are a matter of record however. RI Carling (talk) 09:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you mean in the infoboxes? That's because goalkeepers are just as capable of scoring goals as any other player is, they just don't do it very often. – PeeJay 09:58, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah...because I am sure anyone watching a game will normally think, "I think we might get a goal from Buffon and maybe an assist of Casillas"...this is just a matter of common sense; there should be a clean-sheet table for ONLY goalkeepers. Jamen Somasu (talk) 10:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That kind of statistics table might be fine a section in the body of the article, but not for the infobox. Digirami (talk) 11:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As long as the info is available in reliable sources, of course. Although the first commenter in this section, states that "clean sheets are a matter of record", I'd be surprised if a reliable sources exists that gives a clean sheets figure for Peter Shilton, let alone Frank Swift.  If clean sheets were to go into the infobox, we'd then end up with a system whereby outfielders had "goals scored", goalies from the last ten years or so had "clean sheets", and goalies from before then had.........heaven knows :-P -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PS "why aren't goalkeeping stats given for goalkeepers and defenders" - I've never ever seen a source that lists goalkeeping stats for defenders -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia isn't a collection of statistics. The idea of filling player articles with pass completion rates, etc. seems pretty unencyclopaedic. Ilikeeatingwaffles (talk) 12:51, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Any admins about with an interest in cut-and-paste moves
might want to explain to this newly-registered (though not new) user how and how not to move pages, with reference to Greg Ross (footballer) / Greg Ross and Calum Woods (footballer) / Calum Woods. Judging by their other contributions, the user clearly knows how the move tab works, but not what they ought to do when it doesn't. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I only checked the Calum Woods ones, but all he/she seems to have done there is re-directed one to to the other (prior to today there seem to have been two articles on this player) - nothing wrong there as far as I can see......... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 14:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow, there's a lot of back-history to that one: moved in 2008, recreated at its original location by an IP without changing the new one, then redirected by Unreal7 only for the other page to be redirected back to that one. I can't tell who if anyone was wrong there. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:07, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It was Unreal7 as an IP (see their user page) who copied CW (footballer) to CW diff some months ago without changing CW (footballer), thus leaving 2 articles on the same player, then people edited both, and in the last few days it was redirected. Something's wrong somewhere... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 14:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * All the revision for those two articles should be where they are meant to be now. I left the generic c&pmove on their talkpage. Regards, Woody (talk) 15:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Struway2 (talk) 15:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

FK Partizan crest.
The crest of the club was recently substituted by a older one by User:LAz17. As anybody can see, the crest of the club has 2 stars on top, but Laz, after failing to archive it by asking it on tyhe club talk page, revengfully replaced it by his own decition. Well, he put in place the crest of the club, yes, but of the organisation, SD Partizan. The problem is that the official crest of the football club is the same, but with the 2 stars on the top (as it rightfully was in place on the article, before that user, almost in a vandal move, replaced it). The 2 stars mean the 22 national championships... Since my download manager is not working properly, can someone please see, and fix it. Bast regards to everybody :), FkpCascais (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC) P.S.:You can all see the official crest on the official club website, and on the previos version of the same (I wanted to revrt the move, but it doesn´t...). FkpCascais (talk) 20:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The Libertadoes topscorer article...
Greetings all, I would like some opinion on this article, please... before it gets ugly. Digirami (talk) 20:59, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Why Protect a page? Paranoia
So the Ukrainian Premier League Season has completed... And now the harassment begins. Why is the duplicate use of (R) needed (and enforced) when the is a specific column with Qualification and Relegation which details quite clearly where the teams are relegated and that the season is over. The (R) is NOT needed! Also why is that footer blaring information which is not pertinent after the season is completed? The annotation is bogus and just another attempt of control, conformation and harassment. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 22:44, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Have you tried to discuss this calmly with the other editors of the page? I'm sorry but I don't think this is a case of harassment, just a disagreement over how to present a very minor part of the table. Camw (talk) 04:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I would agree with you that the (R) is not needed when the season is finished (along with some stuff in the footer). But if there was a disagreement, talk it out. Digirami (talk) 05:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's precisely because of the "stuff in the footer", a.k.a the legend, that the addition marking must be presented. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:22, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Must be presented? If 6 of the 7 annotation symbols are not needed in the post season - the footer is a typical array of useless information with additional bytes that are carried onto every standings table that uses the template. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's an "array of useless information with additional bytes that are carried onto every standings table", then let's change the template rather than ignore what we don't like (or understand) about it. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * An attempt was made but it was reverted - as usual by those who seem to think that they know better. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 00:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

As a reference, please see: 2009–10_Fußball-Bundesliga and 2009–10_Premier_League. Are those leagues doing it wrong? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * In the case of The Bundesliga, the (R) is duplicated because the 17th and 18th placed teams are clearly relegated by the information in the Qualification and relegation column. The 16th placed team is correctly clarified by the (O). All other annotation should not be displayed in the post completed season – especially qualification. In the English Premier League only the (C) should be annotated because it is clear that the 18th, 19th and 20th teams are relegated. Because of the variation of the different conditions that exist in different competitions around the world - the canned format of this footer is inappropriate. The template fb footer had an conditional option for not displaying this annotation leaving the information to be entered by discretion by a manual entry that would be specific for each competition. Flexibility is the key, which is lacking. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 03:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So everyone else is doing it wrong and only you are doing it right. I understand. Please fix the template. Until it's fixed, it is correct formatting to use the additional marking. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * One thing further. At any other time prior to the completion of the season, the markings are incorrect. They are only correct at the end of the season when a team is crowned champion, some teams are promoted and others relegated. At all other times it is simply an indication of current placement. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:56, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you still think that you are the ruler of Wikipedia, as what you are doing now, you'll lose all reputation here. The consensus has been made recently but you still against it. Wikipedia is not your own site. Thank you. :-) Raymond "Giggs" Ko 21:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

David Jones (footballer born 1984)
I wondered if someone can look at this page. I was the last to update the page but the stats box seems to have mysteriously disappeared.Gobbleswoggler (talk) 09:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think there has ever been a stats box on that page. Certainly not in the last three months or so. – PeeJay 09:34, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I purged the page cache and it looks ok now. Camw (talk) 11:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Premier League clubs, Category:Football League clubs
Should the above categories be added to club categories? I see there are several such sub-categories in Category:Premier League clubs, but only a few in Category:Football League clubs. - <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;text-shadow:grey 0.4em 0.4em 0.4em"> Dudesleeper  talk  17:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

File deletion
2009–10 UEFA CL0.PNG and 2009–10 UEFA EL.PNG are now for TfD as the season finished. Please help. Raymond "Giggs" Ko 21:29, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Regarding honours
When a player plays the first half of the season for a team that later obtains a season-long championship, should he be considered a champion too? An example: José Ernesto Sosa played the first half of the 2009-10 with Bayern Munich, but joined Estudiantes for the second half. Bayern eventually won Bundesliga and German Cup. Is he champion of those tournaments? Thanks. Fache (talk) 21:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It depends on the particular rules of that competition e.g. for the Premier League/Football Leagues players have traditionally needed to have played in 10 or more League matches to gain a medal. Eldumpo (talk) 19:14, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:V - it's not for editors to decide or interpret rules in this case. If a source says he was a member of the championship-winning side then say so and cite your source. If you can't find sources to support the assertion, say nothing on the matter. Knepflerle (talk) 21:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Some weird articles
Could I ask you to have a look at the contributions of an editor, who may be ? Thanks, Mr Stephen (talk) 09:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 2010 Bass Charity Shield, a new article that describes a game in July 2010 (sic).
 * Having set the scene, we have a new article, Bass Charity Shield: there is a Bass Charity Vase see here, but not, apparently, a Shield.
 * U.E. Neuva Barcelona is another new article on a minor Spanish club, with a rainbow alliance of playing staff.
 * We then move to this diff at Old Trafford: anyone?
 * Ben Turner (footballer born 1992), another new article, looks mostly believable to me see here. How is he for notability?
 * I've got rid of the first one, seeing as it was a blatant hoax. The others also seem to be hoaxes, but they aren't obvious enough for most admins to delete them under WP:CSD. I think PRODs (or failing that, AfDs) are the best way to deal with the others. Big  Dom  10:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at this page, the recent history seems to tie in with the article, so I've moved it to the proper title and corrected the obvious errors (the creator seems to think that the tournament started in 2005 when it was actually 1889!). Whether or not it is notable enough for an article is another matter. Alzarian16 (talk) 16:50, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ben Turner is legit . However, we'd need referenced domestic app for notability.
 * The Barca one a hoax though. Antartican player John Mikel?!? <b style="color:#E32636;">Rambo's Revenge</b> <b style="color:#FFA500;">(talk)</b>  16:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a Burton Albion youth player called Ben Turner, but it sure as hell ain't the one that's written about here. He also hasn't played in the Football League – he was merely a youth player at Rotherham United, possibly played first-team non-league football with Dronfield, never in a million years did he play for the non-existent Hillsborough (although he did play for Burton's reserves at Hillsborough Stadium). Also, the article says he is a defender while the link you have provided states that he plays in defense. And as for representing the England C team – well, if that's true, I will personally print out the article and eat it. Now, I'm all for assuming good faith, but giving a muppet like this any kind of benefit of the doubt is just ridiculous. Big  Dom  17:04, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Completely agree BigDom, I've just PRODded it. GiantSnowman 17:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, don't think anyone's likely to contest that PROD. So that only leaves Bass Charity Vase. It only gets 790 Google hits, but some of those are news pages covering it in reasonable detail (this being an example). So do we think it's notable or not? Alzarian16 (talk) 17:14, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The bit about the 2010 edition taking place at Wembley in front of over 80,000 fans is surely a load of bollocks.........? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 20:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course it's a load of bollocks, look who wrote it. Big  Dom  20:55, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The editor's another one of these Cheese291, Cheese286,  Cheese300 serial sock/vandals. Some of their articles are total hoaxes, others are genuine, but created to add false information to. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ooh, good call. If any admins are reading this, please block the most recent one as a vandalism-only account. Alzarian16 (talk) 17:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

1962 and 1963 Copa Libertadores
Does anyone have a good site (any language will do) about those two editions? I keep trying to dig but I usually come up empty. Jamen Somasu (talk) 16:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move of Red Star Belgrade (and Real Madrid)
Red Star Belgrade is currently going through it's fifth(!) requested move discussion; members of this WikiProject may want to contribute to the discussion here.

There is a (very) loosely related requested move discussion at Talk:Real_Madrid_C.F., but I suspect that may be closed in the near future anyway. Knepflerle (talk) 10:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This article has already been nominated for moving again (i.e. its sixth discussion) here; members of this WikiProject may want to contribute to the discussion. Knepflerle (talk) 13:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Juan Antonio Rodriguez
Has anyone got any sources showing this Mexican footballer has played. It was created in October 2006 and he is not listed in a rating of Pumas players for Apertura 2006. He is also listed as a redlink at a dab page on the Spanish wikipedia. Eldumpo (talk) 07:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd be tempted to say he's a hoax. No player of even a similar name is listed on the Pumas page on mediotiempo for either Clausura or Apertura 2006. Google searches for "Juan Antonio Rodriguez" "UNAM Pumas" produce nothing. Google searches for just "Juan Antonio Rodriguez" "Pumas" come up with someone who got a 4-month ban for violent conduct off the ball, playing in a Mexican 7-a-side league (or some variant, anyway) for a team called Pumas TJ. He'd fit with the nickname "el combatiente"..... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response. I will wait a while to see if anyone else has comment, and then I will probably put it up at AfD. Eldumpo (talk) 21:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Conference National (Blue Square Premier) Play-Off Final 2010 - Attendance
I'd like to ask where people get the attendance from? At Wikipedia it says 42,669. Oxfort United official website says 38,957 while Blue Square Football website doesn't say anything about the attendance. My question is where people take those numbers from because it's quite big difference. Which one to believe? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.11.59 (talk) 09:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The 42,699 figure is taken from the BBC News report linked at the bottom of the article -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:15, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Imagine it comes from ref #1, the Conference website, which references the sentence in the lead where the attendance figure is given. BBC confirms it, though... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Rangers F.C.
I would appreciate it if neutral editors could take a look at the discussion on the Rangers talk page. There is a dispute over whether a source from the Sunday Herald should be used in the article. The argument centres around the sectarian section where the text mentions the orange strip used by Rangers (connecting it for some to the Orange order) a few years ago and the furore surrounding the said strip. On the one side the argument is that it brings undue weight to the subject and recentism. On the other side the argument is that it was so important that anti-sectarian organisations got involved in the debate whilst the source quotes an MSP saying that Rangers made a mistake and were right to withdraw it. I hope I have put this as neutrally as I can and hope editors can look in and give their opinions. Thanks. Jack forbes (talk) 18:51, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

FC Barcelona season 1993–94
The 'as at October 2009' notes that have been placed under the Squad and Starting 11 sub-headings of this article don't read right to me. I think there should simply be the reference to the source. Is there some kind of standard on this point for club season articles? Eldumpo (talk) 21:46, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Mark Redshaw
Now, we've come across this fellow before (1st AfD, 2nd AfD), but now a user named User:Aboveallstandards has recreated the article about Redshaw, claiming that he is now on the books of Real Murcia. There is no record of anyone named Redshaw on the club's website, but the references that Aboveallstandards has used claim that Redshaw has made 12 appearances for Real Murcia B and scored 9 goals. That said, the same websites also claim that Redshaw made eight appearances in the Football League for Wrexham, despite there being no record of this player at Soccerbase or Neil Brown's Post-War Player Database. I have tagged the new article with db-hoax, but I think this will probably be denied, so I would appreciate some back-up with a PROD nomination. – PeeJay 13:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The Football League confirms no appearances by Redshaw for Wrexham in 2001/02, Wrexham official site confirms no appearances by Redshaw in 2002/03, and Real Murcia official site confirms no appearances by Redshaw for their second XI this season. Rather better sources than Soccerway, in my view, and certainly better than transfermarkt. You could always make a dummy edit to the article, to add an edit summary pointing the admin to this discussion. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:47, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the words "pull" and "leg" are applicable here. Jared Preston (talk) 19:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Prodded. I'm sure it won't last long, if anyone sees the prod removed, please procedurally take it to AFD.  Cheers.  The Rambling Man (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I just checked the club website and info, it only has info on 10 of the second XI players so that can't be the complete squad for last season. It seems there the players still under contract or signed new deals with the team for next season.
 * Try pressing the little red arrow that goes on to the next 10..... Struway2 (talk) 07:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Pressed the little red arrow and there was only another 4 players on next page, total of 14 players.
 * Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. Go to http://www.realmurcia.es, enter the site and you'll see a red navbar at the top. Hover over Equipos and click on Real Murcia Imperial, the second XI. That lands you at the 2009/10 team photo page. No Redshaw. Click on the Estadísticas tab above the photo and you get to the link mentioned above, http://www.realmurcia.es/mur00/press_not.php?sop=42&secc=21&sub=9&ubi=5&id=2400 . It contains a stats table for 10 players, headed Jugadores 1 a 10 de 25, players 1 to 10 of 25. Go to the bottom of the page and there's a box containing a red arrow, which takes you forward to Jugadores 11 a 20 de 25, players 11 to 20, and a double red arrow go-to-the-end symbol, which takes you to the last page of the set, Jugadores 21 a 25 de 25. Three pages, 25 players, no Redshaw. Struway2 (talk) 12:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It also says on the websites mentioned above that he is now unemployed so im guessing he is no longer with the club anymore so that needs to be changed on the page. 90.217.54.234 (talk) 20:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Noel Anderson (footballer)
An article that appears to have been copied and pasted from somewhere but I can't find the source. Is it worth cleaning up? I'm not sure if he meets WP:Athlete. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It looks to be a news report of some kind. Not only is that a copyvio, as you said the player looks to fail WP:ATHLETE. GiantSnowman 00:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have placed a prod on it. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Jumping of the gun
The consensus seems to be to wait until 1 July to update club divisions in infoboxes and the like, but seems to have slipped through the net. Just brining it to attention in case anyone wants to make the necessary reversions. - <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;text-shadow:grey 0.4em 0.4em 0.4em"> Dudesleeper  talk  09:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Same thing happened with the top two leagues in Germany. I couldn't be bothered to revert all of the changes, but if anyone has time on their hands... Madcynic (talk) 09:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The Iranian national football Team's record against other nations
I just found that page and went to move it but there's already a Iran national football team results. They are both set in different formats and both have their advantages and disadvantages. wasn't sure what to do with the new one. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 03:46, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

An assist?
I would appreciate any thoughts on Sigi Schmid. I am attempting to get it to FA and some criticism would be helpful.Cptnono (talk) 04:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Nikola Zigic
Sky Sports, who as we know are the fount of all true facts re matters football, "understands" that Birmingham City have agreed a fee for Mr Zigic. Should I/we All helpful suggestions gratefully received, Struway2 (talk) 16:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) revert all mention of this from his page on sight, on the basis it's total speculation, until something real actually happens (I tried this one, with hidden note asking people to co-operate, it didn't work)
 * 2) add a sentence that says "Sky Sports are reporting..." with source and then revert anything else
 * 3) let them get on with it, only reverting anything that says he's signed (until he does, obviously)
 * 4) remove page from watchlist, stick fingers in ears going la la la can't hear you...
 * Option 2 sounds good to me; since we can't be that they're completely right but we do have a source suggesting that it's likely, this seems like the best compromise. Or maybe option 4... Alzarian16 (talk) 17:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's certainly the pragmatic answer, but it's a slippery slope, and quite possibly against policy. WP:NOTNEWS would say we're not a news service, and "Sky Sports understands" isn't even news, it's journospeak for something they've been told off the record and choose to believe, or choose to believe won't make them look total idiots if it turns out to be rubbish. How far down the gossip column pecking order would be acceptable: Marca, the Daily Mirror, Goal.com, IMScouting, footballrumours :-) Nothing personal, by the way, there are sound arguments against all four options, except possibly #4... cheers, Struway2 (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * With a bit of luck someone will confirm it pretty soon anyway. I notice that the Telegraph are reporting that he's flow in for a medical, so it seems fairly likely to happen. One thing though: NOTNEWS referes only to notability, not verifiability, so probably isn't relevant in this case as we know that Zigic is definitely notable. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:NOT, then... Having just reverted an editor who thought the goal.com report of the fee allegedly being agreed was sufficient justification for adding Mr Zigic to Birmingham's squad, I'm definitely going for option 4. By the time I take my fingers out of my ears, perhaps he will have signed. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Option 1, with edit summary and if necessary note to user about what constitutes "encyclopaedic" What a newspaper understands is not, that is merely speculation, rumour and opinion. Same BS as "xxx has been linked to yyy"-- Club Oranje T 19:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I know what I'm supposed to do. However, if leaving a sourced but unencyclopedic statement of Skyspeak in there stopped the repeated additions of total bollocks from a variery of IP editors, it would, overall, have been less damaging to the encyclopedia. However, it clearly didn't :-) so I've requested temporary semi-protection. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Option 4 every time. Come back when the dust settles. Life's too short. I used to get stressed about editing - then I got rid of my watchlist completely and found it very liberating. --Jameboy (talk) 09:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

File:Brøndby IF Danish Superliga 2004-05.png
Any merit to this image? Looks like OR and POV to me...GiantSnowman 03:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not that sure because image is sourced, and the line-up includes most-used players.--Latouffedisco (talk) 18:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move of banner template
See Template talk:Football. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Is this problematic?
The article Copa de Campeones is newly created on 19 May. It originally is only a re-direct to the article named "South American Championship of Champions" (these two refer to the same tournament, when one in the name of Spanish and one in the English translation). User:Jamen Somasu thinks the article should be named in the Spanish name, so he copy all the information to the Copa de Campeones article, and then change the original article a re-direct to the newly created page. Here is the history of the original article. I would like to know, are we supposed to move the page if we think the name is problematic, instead of what Jamen did? Because, using his method, all the history of the original article will be lost, and the article become like it is newly created for just a few days, although it has already been in this site for more than 3 years. Am I correct? Salt (talk) 15:33, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have merged the histories and left him a note to confirm that he should not have done a copy and paste move -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What's worst is that it was moved to a Spanish title that is incorrect. The Spanish title for the competition was "Campeonato Sudamericana de Campeones'. If it's going to have a Spanish title, it should be that one. Digirami (talk) 21:05, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * According to WP:USEENGLISH, the page should be at the English title. --TorriTorri(talk/contribs) 21:42, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Which date?
At WikiProject_Football, what does the "date" column specify? Is it the date that the AfD/TfD/CfD/PROD/split/merger etc was first raised or the date that the WP:FOOTY page itself was updated to notify the project? Up to now, for all the ones I have added, these dates have been the same but the merge proposal I've just added originates from end of 2008(!). Hence I'm not sure whether I should put the date when the merger was proposed or today's date. --Jameboy (talk) 12:30, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there is an actual policy on this, but I've always used the date on which the issue was first raised, so that it is easy to keep track of when PROD's are schedualled for deletion. Sir Sputnik (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, date of the PROD/AfD/move disussion or whatever being initiated. GiantSnowman 23:38, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've added a hidden comment to that effect next to the Date column header. --Jameboy (talk) 09:36, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

2011 FIFA U20 World Cup
Hello! I noticed that on page for 2011 FIFA U20 World cup writer mentioned that it will be first U20 WC with 32 teams. However, when explaning qualifying system only 24 teams (or slots) are there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.136.216.241 (talk) 16:14, 27 May 2010 (UTC)